What a (half) Marathon Weekend Looks Like

First, you decide that instead of resting completely and sleeping in (yeah right with an almost three year old, but at least sleeping until "normal" time), you will get up an hour early to take your car in to get the noise it's been making for six months fixed. Heck, maybe the fourth time will be the charm. For such an occasion, you will not shower and you will barely dress yourself. You will not bother to dress your child who will be rolled out of bed and be given a PopTart in the car. Upon arrival home, you will chase him around the house unmercifully tickling him until he falls down in giggles and painful adorableness.

Then, when he learns that instead of additional sugar fuel (PopTarts) he will be given an adequate breakfast, you will be given this reaction. I fear that my decision was right, despite his reaction since they had a popcorn machine at the Nissan dealership and the gate guard gave him a cookie on the way into housing. So, if the boy is going to cry hunger, he's full of it and if he wants food, he's going to get at least something nourishing before 8 a.m. after that bunch of crap.

He got over it. The tickle bonding worked.

Don't you think?

Anyway, after you spend your morning losing 50% of your functioning vehicles and 100% of the vehicles that you can drive if you are Rachel because your husband insists on driving an manual transmission (didn't we invent automatic transmission vehicles in the stone age?), then you wait for Granny and Granddad to show up so you can drive all the way to Huntington Beach to pick up a piece of paper you plan to pin to your shirt at the crack of down the following day so you can find yourself in agony shortly thereafter. Since that eats up a heck of a lot of time and you are thus exhausted already and ready to rest for tomorrow, you let your kid watch a movie. Want to guess what it was? That's right folks, it was, "Cinderella." Kidding. Watching Star Wars without his light saber is like going number two without toilet paper. Just.Not.Done.

Moving us to marathon morning. Since it's about a forty minute drive and the parking lots fill up by 6:30, guess what time we left? Yeah. The race starts at 7:25. Um, yeah. It was about a two-ish mile walk to the start line. Sounds like a good warm up, right? It was NOT a fun cool down. Anyway, I will say that we shaved over a minute per mile off of our expected finish time because we rock. We came in 4699th out of 20K runners at 2:10:56. Hooray for us. This is my favorite picture. Thanks Donna for watching Collin so Bryon didn't have to push the jogging stroller 13.1 miles. Thanks for coming to the race. Thanks for waving your arms like a lunatic so I'd see my son and be able to push that last little bit when I thought I was dying. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. And thanks for the picture of your arm to remind me of it. Oh, and there we are. And there is my face screaming at my son. And here is me noticing that when I run, my legs are weirdly muscular. I didn't know that they looked like that. And there's Bryon literally saying, "Hi mom!"

Here's us torturing our child. Fun, huh? He looks thrilled to be there. I think it must be all the pride he has for us at this moment. It's bursting forth and he can't contain it all. That must be it. It has nothing to do with wanting to get down and play.

Here's us not torturing our child but more importantly, me not torturing you. Want to know what's cropped OUT of this picture? Two very shirtless dudes in what I have deemed way too short running shorts; one of them of the American flag print variety. Ah, the things you see on race day. One girl dressed as a banana and I saw a number of tutus, not a single one on what you would call a petite woman. If you are going to call attention to yourself in something like a tutu, I mean, really? Jumbo tutu? I'm just sayin.

And, my second favorite picture is my dear, sensitive child telling me that I am not, in fact, a superhero and I should remove my cape. Try explaining to your child that you have lost so much sweat in the last two hours that your body has lost the ability to regulate your temperature and that you are literally soaking wet and the cool ocean breeze is chilling you down to your very core and that you are not shivering for his entertainment. Perhaps, since has inherited what I have decided is, in fact, a superhero-like ability to sweat, from me, he will understand this problem in due time. I mean, I sweat folks, seriously sweat when I run. You could ring out my clothes at the half-mile mark.

Eh, he got bored of me anyway. Look, barriers!

Ahhh, showered. Ahhh, the couch. Ahhh, a shirt that I stupidly grabbed the wrong size of and now I essentially paid $90 for a shirt that is too big and can't take back. What was I thinking? A small? Ahhh, do I ever have to get up again?