Thursday, October 20, 2011

Mother Fucking Rock Star

Look, y'all, there's a lot of bad stuff happening at Sarah's House and it's bullshit and unpleasent and bad, but it's important that I tell y'all about something good, so here goes.

Remember when I told you about the bridge race?  The one that was cancelled because of the mercy of the Baby Jesus Tropical Storm Lee?

It got rescheduled. 

I had still, you know, paid for it and all, so... I kind of still needed to run it.

Over this bridge (just to remind you):
(I believe this is looking toward the West Bank)

Anyway, so the race was rescheduled to October 9.  Almost two weeks ago, already.

At the start line, I was really dismayed to see the turnout.  There were probably only about 250 or 300 racers.  I figure, the fewer the racers, the more likely I am to be last*.

Additionally, I was freaking terrified, like to the point where my hands were shaking.  I had peppered the girl behind me on the shuttle bus** on the way over to the starting point, asking her about the route, whether to be scared, etc, but it didn't do much to calm my nerves.  I'm so flipping afraid of heights.

The first mile was almost completely flat ground, just getting to the bridge.  Then you start up and on-ramp, with a long, long, long, long, long but slow ascent.  It felt good, running uphill.  As I rounded a curve, I started to joke around with the other runners, including a SLIDELL XCOUNTRY GIRL as I passed her.  KABOOM.

And so it kept going up.  And up.  And up.

I swear, by the time I was actually on the bridge, all I could think of was that soon it would stop being an uphill route.  The lane for the runners was way wide and comfortable, and as long as I stayed far from the edge, I was okay.  There were three of those metal grate-type thingees that I had to run over, underneath which was the Mississippi.  That part was ridiculous.  I tried to kind of hop over them.

Finally flattened out right before the end of mile three.  And here's the thing:  Mile four was almost completely downhill.

I've never run uphill before, but also... I have never run downhill and Oh.  Glorious.  God, is that ever fun.

I rocked that part, probably doing that last mile in 8 or 9 minutes.

Total time was 58:00 (even numbers are fun) which is far from outstanding, but I do not care.  58 minutes to run over a 300 foot high bridge, mostly uphill, and come out smiling.  It was amazing.

I called T-Rex, my former running buddy, who has abandoned me for Les Mills***, to tell her about the event.

"Hello?" she said.

"I'm a MOTHER FUCKING ROCK STAR!!!" I said.

She agreed.

*I was not last.  I beat like, several people.  Maybe 50 or more.  Not really sure, they do not seem to be concerned about posting times online (effers.)  I definitely did beat the girl from the local high school cross country team, who, incidentally, did not know Beanie despite him having been on varsity last year.

**The shuttle bus was a defunct school bus, and careening up the on-ramp, over the far-right-hand lane of the bridge, and down again, was by far the scariest part of the whole day.

***Les Mills' name is way too similar to Les Miles.  Also, I'm jealous of people who get to belong to a gym.


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