Fast Weekend

     Yesterday, our class participated in a Special Olympics game day. It was expected to be cloudy all day, but warm. We didn't really know what to expect, but I had some ideas, based on my experience with unified track events that were put on my Special Olympics. 

     I was not disappointed. At the beginning of the games we had the parade of schools. 

      There were only 4 or 5 districts at the games, but there were lots of people. And those clouds we were expecting? They went away almost as soon as we got there. It was a fun day, filled with lots of running (I did a ton of running), sun, and great teamwork. 

     Travis and I tried something new for our Friday coffee date. We went to Barnes and Noble, got coffees at Starbucks, and then went to look at books. I showed amazing self control and only bought Travis one book, one book for myself, and one book as a gift. At one point I did have a stack of books, but I decided that self control is an OK thing sometimes. And we had a good time with our Barnes and Noble coffee date, so I am sure I can get more of the books I wanted over the next several trips. 

     This morning, Travis and I went to Ludlow High School for the Sgt Desforges Walk/Run Challenge. If you are curious about it, or want to donate to the foundation, here is a link to a whole bunch of stuff about it https://runsignup.com/Race/MA/Ludlow/SgtJoshuaDDesforgesWalkRunChallenge I woke up to rain and did consider not going. It did not sound like a fun thing to run in the rain, to do drills in the rain, or to be outside in the rain and not even 50 degrees. But, we run for Josh and because we love his mom, Arlene. So we went. All ready to race!

     At the beginning, there is always a ceremony. It was soggy and chilly, but just as nice as always. 

    Travis and I got started fairly close to the front of the pack and (I) managed to keep up a good pace for probably 1/4 of a mile (maybe?). Which is impressive because most of my runs are very short bursts. I am not fast and I do not have endurance. But I keep going. The first obstacle was crawling under the huge net. The grass was super wet, so we were all super wet when we got out. The next thing we had was a very steep hill. We then got into our push-ups, on muddy ground. Then, it was back off running down the trail until we got to the squats. I can do squats, and even 22 of them was not a hardship for me. We continued on down the trail, sometimes fast, sometimes not so fast, and had drills of carrying buckets of sand up and down a hill, pulling a tire on a rope to the top of a backstop (they said I could go halfway and I said I was going to do the thing right), burpees (ouch, no jumping, I'll go slow), sit-ups, running up and down the bleachers, and then back out to the parking lot behind LHS where we started for the final sprint to the finish line. I was tired and out of breath for a good chunk of the run. And I kept going. I had some really horrible shin splints happening. And I still kept going (but a bit more carefully). And we finished. I did not throw up at the end (I also did not last year, lol, but someone did). Overall I finished in 55th place, 22nd for my gender category, but I did all of the obstacles fully, and not everyone did. I finished in 1 hour and 46 seconds, which I know is better than last year. And really, I only compete with myself. Maybe next year I can get under an hour.

     We stuck around and visited with people a bit, got this nice photo with Arlene and headed home so I could have a hot shower. It was still not even 50 degrees. I then spent a lot of the afternoon with ice on my shins to try to get the throbbing to stop. I had a bit of a nap and finally I was ready to talk about all the running. And all the T-shirts. In the past 2 days I have gotten 2 new T-shirts for 2 different events that involved a lot of running.

     This year, I sort of started semi-training for this event in December, when I sort of started running again. I definitely did a lot more to prepare than last year, where I did nothing other than show up and run. Next year I am going to train more. I will work on push-ups (still can't do even a single proper push-ups) and I will work on sit-ups. I had the marine at the drill station hold my feet because Travis was being lazy about it. It helped, but I super struggled on the last couple. Need to work on that. There has been a lot of running the last couple of days and the weekend is going by incredibly quickly. Maybe I'll take things a bit more slowly tomorrow.