Reason to run

How do you follow up an all day, standing room only, outdoor concert, well by running a half marathon. Yep, I ran the NYC half marathon for the second straight year. I was a bit apprehensive since I hardly trained, competed in a brutal triathlon just a week before, and spent the entire day immediately prior to the race standing up in the sun. Luckily my running friend Aimee agreed to take it easy…nice and easy. We are notorious in run club as the “talking girls” because we non-stop chatter while running. Hey what can I say, I’m a story teller, so I can’t really just shut it off. Surprisingly we didn’t do all that bad by finishing just 4 minutes behind our time from last year. Afterwards, we both felt great and injury free which I think is the most important thing.

I had to ghost run the race because it is a fucked up lottery system. You basically pay $5 for them to put your name in with 30,000 other people and then draw out 5,000 at random. I didn’t get selected, but Aimee did. We didn’t have enough time to photocopy her number for me, so I just wore an old bib hanging down (so I could hid the fact that it didn’t match this year’s bib and make it appear like it just ripped and fell down or something). I figured I could blend in among the thousands of other people in running shorts.

The highlight happened before the race though. I noticed a guy stretching in front of me. I noticed him because he was drop dead gorgeous and couldn’t help but stare at him. After about a minute, I emerged from my fog and realized he was familiar. Too familiar. I stood there running through all the possibilities I may know him (did I see him on TV, is he a friend of a friend, is he the boyfriend of a friend, did I go to college with him, did I play kickball against him….) and then it hit me….we hooked up! Oh yeah! He was the guy I picked up at Alphabet Lounge about a year ago. To make matters even more interesting, he was the 22/23 year old guy who told me I was “well preserved”. Ah ha ha ha, small town. I probably carried the pride (and a silly grin) of hooking up with a total hottie with me for at least 6 miles.