I’m The Turtle In This Story.

Posted by tiff in Momsanity | 2 comments

The story of the Surf City Half-Marathon, a modern day retelling of “The Tortoise and the Hare” except in this story the hare actually finishes the race a couple hours before the tortoise does):

Once upon a time there was a lady who started running one day. She ran and ran and ran. She even got running shoes and actually ran in them, not just walked around in jeans in them. She wasn’t particularly fast or steady, but she eventually could go for 3-6 miles a day, and felt really good about it.

She got a cool app on her iphone that tracked her progress and kept a database of her time/speed/distance.

Unfortunately, her iphone also had cool photo apps on it, along with a super cool video app.

Often in the middle of her run, she’d end up taking pictures and video, which further slowed her down.

Being a slow runner really bothered her. But no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t get much faster than an average of a 12 min. mile! Then, the cool iphone running app came up with an idea to have a training link that would get her training to do a half marathon in under 1:30:00. So, she signed up for both the training program and a half marathon in Huntington Beach…the Surf City.

She trained and trained and trained and….stopped. Instead of training the last month, she packed and organized and moved. She also drank quite a few martinis and spent some time in hot tubs. She promised that the next day she’d start running again, over and over and over. And then she realized 4 days after moving from West Hollywood to Orange that the half marathon was in a few days. She facebooked in desperation, “half marathon this weekend! I’ve never run longer than 8 miles! And haven’t trained in a month! Should I just go for it anyway?” And the people responded with a resounding “Yes! Walk it if you have to! Just do it!” So she scrambled to find her running gear in all the crap strewn around her house and was dangerously close to running without pants on.

After finding her gear at the last minute, she headed out to the half marathon. She had to wake up early to join the other 20,000 runners (!!!!) on the course.

She packed $20 in her pouch so that if things were really horrible on the course, she could stop at a beachside mexican food restaurant, have a margarita, and then call a cab home.

She started running when they said “go” and realized there is a difference between running alone and running with people. When she’d run alone, all she thought about was stopping. When she ran with a pack of people, she thought about catching up to the person in front of her.

She felt not unlike a lion in a herd of gazelles. The movement in front of her forced her on, urged her to keep going at a run. If she’d start to slow down, the people passing her aggravated her sensibilities of not liking to be passed, so she didn’t stay walking for long.

The only breaks she took were to take pictures and videos with her iphone. And check in on facebook so she could read her friends encouraging words.

Finally, after 2 hours and 38 minutes of mostly running, she bounded across the finish line. She felt amazing but looked like death warmed over. It didn’t matter though, because she managed to surprise herself and finish with an overall average speed of an under 12 minute mile…even with all the stopping for pictures and videos. Yeah!

She was glad she’d documented it for herself, but also glad that no one else would really see her tired face and kind of pathetic running stride.

Then, she got an email from the Surf City people to all 20,000 people who ran the race…announcing that they had been taking pictures along the course and linking to it.

Horrified, she realized that out of four pictures they used to link through, she was in two of them. Her very self, pathetic stride and tired face in one of them, and her very self taking an iphone video in the other. She was happy she’d found her pants, but a little mortified at thinking of all the other runners with better strides and less deathly looking faces looking at her in the email.

She clicked through to see the other pictures and realized that the video they showed also featured her, in her lime green running bra and bright red hair, crossing the finish line while taking an iphone video.

She was glad that she had mustered the last minute rally so she was actually running across the finish line instead of crawling.

In the end, the tortoise and the hare both finished, some fast and some slow. But at the end of the race, the point is everyone finished regardless of the time!

The End
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Here’s the half marathon, via my iphone and the 8mm app!