Plotzing

This weekend was filled with firsts. It was the first time I had ever visited Colorado, it was the first time I had ever been on a military base, it was the first time I had spent an extended period of time with more than two kids and it was the first time I went for a "jog" with an ironman competitor. For the purpose of this blog entry, let's focus on my athletic outing.
I had brought my running shoes to Colorado with the faint intention of perhaps getting a bit of exercise while taking in the sites and bopping to some kelly clarkson tunes or maybe an old dixie chick favorite. On our last day there, a beautiful Sunday morning on the airforce base, we decided to take the kids for a walk, I thought why not set out for a quick and easy jog after? It seemed like a great way to expend some nervous energy before our flight back to NY. But where would I run in this unknown land? Surely Fred (all names have been changed in this blog in an effort to not get the shit kicked out of me), my future brother-in-law/marathon runner/ironman extraordinaire would know. But instead of recommending a route, ironman Fred got excited: "I'll run with you!"

For those of you that know me well, I do not run well with others. It's just not what I do. I learned long ago that the only push I need is from myself and having someone by my side makes me overly self-conscious and removes all joy and relaxation from running. I'm also impossibly slow (see blog directly below for more info) and running with others is an unwanted reminder that I appear to actually run in slow-mo. Fear set in.

But what was I to do? Ironman Fred is to be my brother-in-law in only a matter of months. I couldn't let him down! Did I mention he's also a military man?

I was scared, real scared but my time had come and off we went, taking to the trail. Apparently, it's not enough to see the mountains in the distance, one must run up them to be a true ironman. And so I did and despite the fact that I had found it challenging to breath easily when sitting still with the altitude of this new environment, I went forth --huffing and puffing and trying not to collapse. After about 12 minutes or so (ok, it was 11 minutes, he had a stopwatch), we came to a historical little cabin that was used on the Oregon trail or something. It was hard to read the posted information, my vision was blurry-- pain will do that to you. I thought it would be fun to stay and schmooze by the cabin, talk about my days as a 3rd grader playing Oregon Trail on the computer, shooting bison and choosing which kid to throw off the wagon so that we could make it across the river with a lighter load. But ironman Fred pushed on and why wouldn't he? We had only been running for 15 minutes (details, details).

So off we went for what would become the last leg of our morning jaunt. A few minutes after we picked up running again, I thought I saw a light and the light was talking and it said: "come to me and I will make the pain will go away" but I couldn't, I had to impress ironman Fred, I had to make him proud and push on. But then I was like, wait, I don't want to die and I'm pretty sure he doesn't want me to either for the sake of this run (that is still yet to be determined and unconfirmed). So I slowed to a walk and kept up that walking until we got back to the house. And even though ironman Fred may think i'm a failure, I'm here to tell about it.