I've always wanted to run a half marathon, but it's never worked out that Jeremy is home enough before a big race for me to have time to train and deal with two dad-sick kiddos at the same time. I can usually get in a 3-5 mile run in the evenings on the treadmill after the kids have gone to bed, but I just can't find the energy to keep going. I also have never entered a real race and was a little intimidated about what happens and whether I could hack it.
Enter Shawna. In her mind she agreed to do a 5K with me. I went ahead and signed us up for the 10K because I knew deep down we could hack a bigger challenge. Well, it turns out that Shawna has serious back problems so we ended up walking instead of running. In fact, she is such a trooper that she had an MRI on Tuesday before this race and went ahead and had surgery on her leg veins almost a week after this race. Yup, she's hardcore and that's why I love her.
The race people got pretty hostile with us. They refused to give us anything smaller than an XL shirt, which was seriously so big that Shawna threw down and DEMANDED they give the "grosse" girls a different size. They kept pointing to us and putting their hands humiliatingly far apart to show us how big we were.
Then they had Shawna's race information entered incorrectly and said it was our fault. Shawna showed them the email the race director sent apologizing for the mistake and the promise she made to correct it before the big day. Clearly, they were in the wrong. Instead of apologizing, they screamed at us that we were in Germany and we should learn German. There are some English words I'd like to teach them sometime...
Our times were not fantastic, but we definitely were not the last walkers to cross the finish line!
Abby wore this medal to school (and church) every day for one week. She was super proud of me!
Immediately after the race the women began smoking and drinking. Apparently, this is alcohol-free beer, but I know the stuff across the street wasn't.
Total Berlin visitor shot.
We treated ourselves to a big ole rack of ribs after the big race. I ended up packing most of mine up and giving it to Jeremy. Who wants to gain back the weight they just worked off?
2 comments:
hah! I loved that you signed up for a 10k under the auspices of a 5k. I'm running a 5k this weekend and even though I'm a little nervous I'm excited too. Sorry the Germans were such fussy faces about everything!
Ok because it wasn't me I laughed out loud that you signed Shawna up for a race twice as long as she agreed to...but if you'd done it to me I would have KILLED you:)!!! You my friend make me laugh. And to those loser race admin peeps...boo!!! I wish I'd been there...you are nothin but hot hot hot!!!!
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