See, I don't just stand around baking cakes, y'all

My race was this morning. Shay picked me up at 7:45 and we drove to her office to park and walk over to Atlantic Station. I thought we had plenty of time, but we had underestimated the crowds. And, I registered too late to get my race number in the mail, so we had to go to the registration table to get my number. And then we had to stop at the porta-potties because we were both nervous what-with-all-the-hydrating. So, we ended up pretty far back from the starting line at the beginning of the race. In fact, I think they actually called the start of the race as we were going into the potties. Once we got to the official starting line (maybe 10 whole minutes after the clock started ticking), we started running. This was easier said than done. My mercy, there were a lot of people. Saunterers. It was not easy to pass the saunterers. They typically walked about 5 abreast.

If it were up to me, I might have thought, "Well, this was a nice little goal I set for myself, but I guess it was not meant to be today." But, Shay was a machine. A real "warrier in pink" so to speak. She was determined to help me meet my goal, so she kept finding little spots on the sidewalk or grass that we could use to scoot around people. Then she started just asking people (very politely) to let us through and she would bust a little hole out for us to run through. This is one of the reasons I knew ahead of time I needed a friend to run with me and keep me on task. She was awesome.

Long story short: I DID IT ! ! ! I ran the whole race. All 3.2 miles. There was a point, after we had run 17th street to Spring and up the giant (ok, maybe not giant) hill on Spring, down 14th to W. Peachtree, and had started back across the 17th Street bridge that we thought we were nearing the finish. I appeared that we just had to go a little further and turn into Atlantic Station. What we quickly realized that people were not turning right into Atlantic Station, they were going all the way up 17th Street to IKEA and then doubling back before turning left into Atlantic Station. All that may mean nothing to you, but the point is, we thought we were very near the finish, but we still had very nearly a mile to go as best I can figure looking back on it. At that point, I wanted to say I couldn't do it. At that point, I wanted to complain that the ball of my left foot was numb (OK, I did complain that the ball of my foot was numb). At that point, I just wanted to quit and walk the rest of the way. But my cheerleader said all the right things and the thing that is in me that made me want to do this in the first place said to me, "You are NOT going to report to all those people rooting for you that you almost did it or that you ran most of the way. Nope. You are going to do this." And I DID!

Thanks to all of you who were rooting for me, praying for me, thinking of me this morning. I know it was "only a 5k", but for me it was huge. My running future is still uncertain. I don't love it. But, I don't hate it as much as I always thought I did. So, we'll see. For now, I'll just bask in the contentment of having accomplished my goal. Yeah ME!

I promise I'll go back to writing about my kids soon. Later, when I'm less self-involved....