I hate running. Running for “fun” breaks my cardinal rule of “never run unless you are being chased.” So when I was forced to do it for Tae Kwon Do training, I naturally had a hard time with it.
Greg loves running. He likes races. He was ecstatic that I was starting to run with my team. He constantly came out to run with me. I signed up for an 8K race, because it gave me a goal to work towards, and it’s something that I knew would make Greg happy. It did, and he promised to help me train.
Little did he know what he was getting into. The training process with Selena is not fun. I am prone to temper tantrums. I look just about the worst out there as you could ever imagine me. A few runs ago, I stopped at the two mile mark and threw a fit because Greg (Damn Greg!) was being TOO supportive. I jumped up and down. I punched my fists at the air. I screamed out things like “I’m never running again!” and “I’m going home and UN-signing up for this race!” All of this in the manner of a six-year-old being told to brush their teeth. Except on a city street. And I’m 30.
(Side note here: There is also an embarrassing incident of this happening one time on a frisbee golf course.)
Come Saturday night, the Rockville Twilight 8K. A delayed start to try to get over 90 degree weather and the heat advisory. I did it!
Below is a photo documentation of one of my proudest accomplishments! And to see how proud Greg and my family were, I hope he felt like it was worth it.
Before the race.
How I was feeling.
A kid at the race. I think this kid practices Falun Gong or something. Although later, I felt like he was onto something.
If you’ve ever wondered what I look like when I am hating life but aware that someone might be taking a picture.
This is after the race and after I went through the fruit, donut and granola bar buffet. The first time.
This is the reason I would sign up for another race: Four free beers per runner!
Go Dean: 38 minutes! Go Greg: 44 minutes! and Selena: 55 minutes.
4 free beers? Well, f*#!, nobody mentioned that! An hour is totally do-able for that…
I mean… congratulations, guys : ) Especially Selena!!
The 4 free beers thing is hilarious…. as long as you’ve had lots of water first! Congrats!
(And it still amazes me how you and Dean could totally be twins! Gee, can’t tell you’re related.
So I didn’t finish the run according to the results…but some guy by the name of “Kean Kang” finished around 38 minutes (which is just around the speed of sound, if my calculations are correct)
Congrats Selena! You are a better woman than me.
Haha, Kean Kang! You surely ran faster than the speed of sound, if only you had gotten a bit more momentum to be able to break the speed of light, and be able to turn back time to when they entered your name in the race, and get them to spell it correctly.
[...] I’ve blogged about this before, but Greg has a very enthusiastic, positive and caring style when it comes to training. Unfortunately, I typically respond better to my various Tae Kwon Do trainers methods of intimidation and being much harder on me. So it was not unexpected that this time as we were running the race, the demons were coming out the more Greg was making comments to me like: “You’re doing great!†“Almost there!†“You’ve got this!†and “Wheeee!!! Catch me! Catch me!†[...]