It’s a race! I hope I win!

Well, hey!  Fancy meeting you here!

I brought a picture of my newest companion:

That whole page is one single problem.  We’re not allowed to use calculators in my math class, so it’s adding, multiplying, and dividing fractions (and everything else) by hand.  And then!  When you go to type your ultimate answer in?  And you feel this unholy terror because you’ve just spent the last 30 minutes working towards this one answer?  And it’s WRONG?!  A small piece of your soul is carried away by the passing breeze, never to be seen or heard from again. 

I spent the last 5 months of my life training for a half marathon.  Especially near the end, I would wake up pre-sunrise to twinkling stars and 20 degree temperatures in which to run, my ghostly breath visible and smacking me in the face as I passed through it.

Each Saturday morning, the four of us would meet together and run for a couple hours.  Just going, going, going.  Getting better.  Stronger.  Pushing ourselves and each other harder.  We’d watch the sun rise over the mountains as we ran; talking and laughing, sharing stories and experiences.

My personal runs often felt a little like torture, but I always looked forward to Saturday morning.  There’s something about running with people you enjoy that makes the experience approximately four thousand times better. 

I already miss it! 

Even though I woke up yesterday morning with Olivia rather than my alarm, laughing maniacally about the fact that I got to stay in my warm, cozy bed rather than being outside running while miserably sweating and shivering at the same time.  YESSSS.

p.s. somebody remind me tomorrow that I’m not allowed to continue eating the way I did while training.  Because we’re about to have a problem.

We held our annual carb-consumption feast the night before the half marathon at Malawi’s after picking up our race packets:

3 pizzas for 3 girls is totally reasonable!  And then we maybe had another one to share for dessert.  We were sad Michelle couldn’t come.

We went to wait for the buses at 6 a.m.  IT WAS SO COLD.  Like, frigid Antarctica temperatures while we waited for our buses for a whole hour.  Which felt like 7 hours, at least, because time tends to crawl while you are huddled up in a circle, arm-to-arm and leg-to-leg while shivering violently and cursing and shaking your fists and trying not to cry because your tears would freeze into perfect little drops right on your cheeks.

Michelle, Cara, Aislinn, Me

Just to take this picture, we seriously had to uncurl our bodies from that hunched, tense position you take when your core temperature is plunging toward the bottom of the mercury tube.

We finally got to where we were going (in UNheated buses, mind you), only to find a giant tent that was barely semi-warm with body heat.  I’ll just tell you: We spent the first three hours as popsicles.

Jennifer R. Ellsworth: Ruining pictures since 1986.

Finally, finally!, it was time to run. 

Other racing friends.

We had a sincerely spectacular run.  I was so much better prepared than last year, I’d trained for a couple months longer.  It was seriously great.

My dad paparazzied us as we ran down the canyon.  Just jumped out of woody areas and starting snapping away!  Here we are on mile 10.  Almost finished.

And let’s all just think about how incredible Michelle is for deciding to start training for our race only 12 short weeks before it began, starting completely from scratch.  She’d never run more than a mile or two at a time in her life and she totally just whipped herself into racing shape and then set the pace for US, particularly at the end of our race.  She wins!  Even though she looks like a robot in that picture up there!

Paparazzi!

Aaaand, I have a t-rex hand. (Every time!!)

The backs of our tanks which Cara made for us:

We did it!  13.1 miles!  And I even managed to knock 14 minutes off my time from last year.  We finished in 2:04 and my goal was around 2 hours.  Winning!

In case you’re curious, here’s my decision to start running, my first race (a 5k!), and last year’s half marathon. 

p.s. the title of this post comes from the movie Rat Race and is uttered by Mr. Bean and is awesome.