In February, I signed up to run the San Diego Hot Chocolate 15k with my Running Buddy SB (RBSB). We signed up to run it last year (2015) and I because of work or something, I couldn’t make it down to San Diego for the race so RB-SB ran it alone. The real bummer there was that I paid the $70 and didn’t even get the nice jacket that you got if you registered! Had I know that RBSB could have picked it up for me, that would have made missing the race a bit easier to take.
This year, we planned to do it again, this time together. I signed us up on a Thursday night in February. Friday morning I had an appointment with the podiatrist as part of my general intake at my new doctor’s. Well, he gave me great news – I have a partial plantar band tear (I know exactly when it happened, too…8K into the Las Vegas RnR 10k last fall…) Then he said, no running for six weeks…good thing I had the Hot Chocolate 15K in 6.5 weeks and the SF RnR 1/2 marathon in 8.5 weeks… RBSB was coming back off of some health stuff so we agreed that was fine, we’d walk the 15k and I’d try to walk/jog the 1/2 marathon a couple weeks later.
So! Sunday, March 20th we woke up at 5:45am, got ready and left at 6:10am so we could get to the start line by 6:45am as they recommended for the 7:40am 15K start time. RBSB’s significant other, wonderful man that he is, drove us and we arrived much earlier than anticipated – 6:25am – and were able to find a parking spot in a garage two blocks from the start line so we decided to sleep in the car until closer to the start time. As we were resting in the car, something crazy happened, we became adults! So, before I continue with the pre-race events of Sunday morning that led to us becoming adults (despite being in our 30’s…) I should back-up a couple of days.
For me and RBSB both, it was a crazy week, neither of us getting as much sleep as we should have been getting. On Friday, RBSB kindly picked up both of our goodie bags, since I wasn’t going to get there during the expo open hours. Saturday was especially crazy for me because I packed up my entire apartment and loaded it into a moving truck. The plan had been to pack it, move it to storage, return the rental truck and get on my flight to San Diego at 6:30pm…you can read an entire blog post on how that didn’t happen… I ended up getting on a 9pm flight to San Diego and ate my first meal in 36 hours, a delicious veggie sandwich I grabbed at the airport. I also drank 24 oz of water in the first 10 minutes of the flight to counteract the dehydration induced by the two 24oz double shot lattes and two 20oz Coca-Colas , which made up my fluid intake the past 36 hours (not my usual beverage choices by any means…but you do what you have to do.) Anyway, the flight landed in in San Diego at 10:30pm (my favorite time to land in that particular city, FYI!) and by the time we got to Sarah’s and I showered (it was absolutely necessary, go read that post on moving…) I fell asleep icing my plantar band sometime about midnight.
RBSB and I get along so well because we share the same sense of commitment, work ethic, and genuine belief that we really can do it all – we do what it takes to “get $h1t done.” We are two tough chics, if I may say so myself. So here’s the thing – other than the fact that we paid of the race, there was absolutely no reason we HAD to run the race… in fact, running the race was not going to have any positive outcome. I was most likely going to injure my plantar band further and we were both exhausted so it was going to be unnecessary stress on our bodies for what? A bowl of chocolate at the end and a medal? (Ok, so we do #runforthebling so the medal is kind of important…) So, back to Sunday morning, resting in the car. To the very kind gentleman who drove, it was clear neither of us thought it was a good idea to run but neither of us wanted to admit that we shouldn’t so, he decided we should let fate decide – Heads, we put our heads back on pillows, Tails, we got our tails moving. The first nickel flip came up Heads; we decided best two out of three. Heads, Tails, and then just for good measure Heads, Tails, Heads, and Heads again. So, 5:7, fate clearly didn’t want us to run the 15k. Instead we went and ate breakfast, about 15k worth of calories… (when the waitress said it was a decent size cinnamon roll, what she really meant was it was the size of a dinner plate!)
We went home and all slept like rocks for four hours. My body was very thankful and my sore plantar band was especially thankful. There hasn’t been a moment since that I’ve regretted not running the race, which is a surprise to me. Usually I would feel guilty or disappointed in myself for not being able to tough it out. Hence, the becoming an adult moment 🙂 At 10:50pm Sunday I boarded a redeye to Detroit wearing my race jacket, more proudly than I’ve ever worn any other race item. To continue adulting, I also decided not to run the SF RnR 1/2 and instead we are going to run the RnR Carlsbad 5000 and 1 mile. The medals for Carlsbad are way cooler than SF anyways! – Cue the end of adulting! 🙂 )
Third time’s supposed to be a charm right? So, RBSB and I are planning to do the 2017 San Diego Hot Chocolate 15k and maybe next year I’ll actually make it to the starting line…and hopefully it won’t take until 2018 to get to the finish line!
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I hear a lot of runners talking about just running through injuries but I just can’t imagine doing long term damage when running isn’t essential to my livelihood. Have you ever run with an injury? Was it worth it?
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