Just to recap, here are the 3 possible scenarios of what happened the night of Andrea's college graduation:
- We accidentally pushed the 'POLICE' emergency button on Andrea's phone, which resulted in an angry visit from the Hamilton Police.
- We entered and successfully completed a 5K race, in which Andrea finished 1st Place for her age group.
- We drove to Philadelphia to see Gavin DeGraw perform in a private concert that we were invited to, thanks to Andrea's cousin Frank.
I know it seems absolutely insane that Andrea and I would suddenly decide to enter a 5K race on her graduation day (and even more incredible that Andrea would finish first in her age group), but there are perfectly rational explanations for both of these occurrences. Well, maybe not rational, but explanations...
One of Andrea's sisters has a friend whose father passed away from cancer a little over ten years ago. He was an avid runner and, ever since his untimely passing, a 5K charity race has been held in his honor each year. Well, Andrea had mentioned during the morning of her graduation that the race was at 7:00PM that night and, considering I always do things that I am extremely unprepared for, I was pumped to enter the race. So we did!
We took a quick 1 hour power nap after our dinner at The Olive Garden, and it was off to the race to register. With our $20 registration fee, we received a free t-shirt and a one-way ticket to running HELL...
Let me just say right now, running 20 minutes a day at the gym on a treadmill is NOTHING like running for 3.1 miles in the middle of a neighborhood street...one
ends with a sense of satisfaction with one's physical abilities, the other ends with a sense of heart and lung failure. BUT, even though it was very challenging, both Andrea and I were able to run the ENTIRE time, never stopping to rest, and finished around 32 minutes (which isn't that bad, considering we did about three 10 minutes miles pretty steadily). A little less exciting was that, while we didn't come in last place, we finished in 71st and 72nd place out of........80 runners. Kind 
of sucks, but we did it AND almost all of the runners there were super-serious runners, not somewhat physically capable 22 year-olds with a death wish (the #1 runner finished around 15 minutes, which is really good...but it's nice to know we finished with a time only doubled that of the first place finisher). Best part of the race: getting to grab the small cup of water while continuing to run, splashing it on my face, and then throwing the cup on the ground, just like the real runners do!So, how did Andrea come in 1st place for her age group if she finished in 71st place overall? Well, when you're one of only two females entered in the 18-24 year old age group, it's more possible than it seems. Still, she beat the other girl and I'm damn proud of her!
There you go, that's the end of our crazy day, Friday May 12th, 2006. Unfortunately, the next day, Saturday May 13th, 2005, was a return to the usual routine of my daily life (i.e. watching movies, eating food, going to the gym, spending time with Andrea, etc.)...of course, I had to figure out how to do all this without using my legs, as my leg muscles decided to take the next few days off in protest over my abusing them...hell hath no fury like a calf muscle scorned!
4 comments:
Finally. To bad a 5K is about 23 miles short of a marathon.
who said it was a marathon?
I could of sworn one of the lines said 5k marathon, but I can not find it now, cough edit cough. I should have quoted it earlier. However, since it is not there at this reading, I apologize. Always nice to finish a 3.107 miles on pavement.
You're right, it did say marathon once or twice, but I obviously edited it out because I didn't want to offend you, the Running Terminology Police, any longer. It's a blog, my friend...don't be so serious.
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