Friday, December 7, 2012

Jingle Bell Run causes nightmares...

     It is the eve of my first 5K with 3 little girls.  I'm scared to death.  Not cause of the 3 miles, that I'm ok with.  It's the 3.1 miles with 3 little girls.  In our training, they have actually ran farther than that.  But they haven't done it knowing just how far they are running.
     I love my little girls.  Let me just say that in case anything else I write tonight makes you think otherwise.  They are sweet, funny, silly, beautiful, amazing little creatures that I am still not quite sure that God didn't mix it up somehow and give me someone else's kids.  But they are DRAMA queens.  Look at them funny and you can make them cry.  They have the feet stomping, nasty glare, teenage attitude down and they are 6, 6 and 9.
     S whined so much for the 1st minute of one run that I told her to just go home.  K makes this noise somewhere between and moan, whine, cry and grunt that is worse than nails on a chalkboard and she can do it for 20 minutes without stopping.   And poor A...  That kid falls down almost every run.  She definitely has her mother's grace.  I finally decided that maybe running with their iPods wouldn't be a bad thing.  A's fell out 2 minutes in and she cried for the following 5 minutes.
     So this race...  They are planning on 3000 runners for the 5K.  We are doing about an 11 min mile (they can actually run a sub 10 min mile but I'm saying 11 for the race).  That's about 35 minutes of dodging race traffic, trying to not lose anyone, dealing with people that can't run faster than them but can't handle being passed by 6 y/o's, attempting to run a decent pace, trying not to lose anyone (yes, I know it's already on the list),  and really truly hoping that there are no meltdowns in public.  Not by them, mind you.  I know they are going to cry about something.  By me.  I can't always handle all the drama and some times I snap.  But tomorrow night I won't be able to send anyone home and I won't be giving them their iPods (can't risk losing them on the course).  Oh, and 3.1 miles of jingle bells is bound to get on anyone's nerves, it's not just me, RIGHT???
     In all honesty, they are doing great with the whole running thing.  I kind of pushed them into it.  They needed an activity and no one was motivated to do anything and I wasn't paying hundreds of dollars for them to want to quit 2 weeks in or for their father to not take them.  I convinced them that running club would be fun.  "We can all go together," I said,  "we can find some fun runs that we can do.   You guys can run my big beach race with me."  They've trained regularly this entire 8 weeks.  They wouldn't run 5 straight minutes when we started and they can now do 20+ minutes without complaining or walking.
    Why can't I sleep then???  I am a crazy perfectionist.  I want tomorrow to be awesome and I think that my fears that it won't be are keeping me up.  I'm worried about finding the place, parking, finding the team, not losing anyone, and that they will actually like this.  I have enjoyed running club so much and I really hope that after tomorrows race, I will have 3 long term training partners... Fingers crossed.  See you at the finish line!

2 comments:

  1. Ok, so I'm very curious. How'd this go? Would be great as a follow up post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Run went surprisingly well... I'll see if I can write about it.

    ReplyDelete