The Ridiculously Unbelievable True Story!

Remember that great big 10k race we ran back in October that I never blogged about? Well, yeah, I've been purposely waiting to tell the story because 1) it's really, really long, and 2) I've been waiting for SD's brother who was there taking pictures of us to send me the photos. But after all this waiting for those photos, when he came over at Thanksgiving he informed us he deleted all the photos that we never even saw, which totally defeated the purpose of him being there for us, and I was really disappointed to hear that. But there's nothing I can do about it.

Our friends took some pictures of us that day too, so I just sent them a message to see if they might still have any of the photos from that day we could see, which would mean a lot since that was our very 1st race together, so we'll see. In the meantime, the race organizers did take a couple of pictures of us and if you know our last name you can view those pictures here for a little while longer. Just type in our last name and it will bring up both of our names and you can view a couple of pictures.

Alright, so no photos aside, let me tell you all about our incredibly crazy, totally insane 10k race. Since I don't have any photo illustrations you'll just have to let your imagination wonder. By far it will go down in history as one of THE most ridiculously unbelievable days of all time, hence the name of this post.

Looking back the biggest thing I can remember is having laughed so much and so hard all day long that my cheeks were really hurting from laughing so much! The story starts the night before, as we had been planning a movie night with Scott and Christa for about 2 months prior to the race to watch a movie called “Run, Fatboy Run!” If you’ve never seen it, you SERIOUSLY need to go to the movie rental store and pick it up NOW!

With all the exercise, training, and having gone through the process of beginning new workouts  we found this movie to be so unbelievably hilarious! I laughed so hard during the movie I almost totally peed myself, had tears streaming down my face, and at one point spilled my water all over my shirt and had to change! So…yeah, if you haven’t ever seen it, you need to go rent it NOW!!!! If you have seen it, then this will be even funnier to read! There could not have been a more perfect movie for us to watch the night before our big race!

Unfortunately, the swine flu has been around like crazy and Christa ended up really sick with the flu right before the race. She came over for movie night, but after several months of training and running with me almost every Sat., registering for the race, etc. she ended up not being able to run with us. Scott ran it on his own (he’s 29 and never trains but yet he ran the 10k in 43 min., which is like a 7 minute mile pace…I know, it makes me sick that people who don’t bust their butts to train as much as I do can just show up and run that fast!).

Anyway, the race on Sat. started at 9:30am in Boise, so we had to get up pretty early to pack up all the kids, drive from Nampa to Boise, and load on the buses that shuttled us to the start line. The weather was perfect, so that was awesome. The race ended at the BSU Bronco stadium. When we arrived at BSU to load the buses that shuttled us to Old Eckerd Rd. (where the race started) all of the bathrooms…ALL of them were totally locked and they were trying to radio someone to open them.

We had been practicing several 10k runs trying to fully hydrate ourselves ahead of time so we wouldn't have to carry any water with us. So both of us had to seriously pee big time, so it was very frustrating to see a million portapotties placed all over but all of them were locked! We finally found ONE that was open and managed to pee and take off our warm up suits.

[Side note: it seems so totally ridiculous to me that in order to feel totally comfortable temp wise during the run that I have to feel completely freezing to death just prior to the run, so it was extremely cold and I was totally shivering to death when I had to take off my warm up jacket and pants and was only wearing a thin sleeveless tank top and short running shorts.]

We gave our stuff to IK and the kids headed into the stadium with SD's brother to wait for us while we headed back over to the area to load the buses. After all the problems with the first 5k race I ran back in June (race course being totally screwed up and cut short by about a whole mile, so I didn’t have a true accurate chip time...you can read more about it here and then here) I made sure to pick a 10k race that was VERY reputable, had been around for a long time, and had great reviews.

This 10k, Barber to Boise, has been around since 2001 and about 1,000 people participate in it every year. So the bathroom thing was a little frustrating, but I knew there were more bathrooms at the start line. So we loaded the buses and drove to the start area. Tons of people were there, in total 866 people ran the 10k and another 344 people ran the B2B 5k.

Now, you know there’s a whole pre-race regime you go through to fuel up so you’re not dehydrated or in need of water during your run. Well, the night before I carb loaded with some pasta for dinner (it’s kind of a myth to eat enormous amounts of pasta the night before like some people do, you’re supposed to carb load, but still eat normal portions) so that’s what I did plus I drank an enormous amount of water to totally hydrate myself. The idea is to be peeing so often your pee is totally clear.

Then the next morning I ate a waffle with a cup of hot tea and a Gatorade. Then about 2 hours prior to the race I had a Powerbar, and then about 30 min. prior to the race I had a banana and another Gatorade. So I had to pee BIG TIME at BSU and then again when we arrived at the start…and then AGAIN another 20 min. later, each time totally feeling like I had let out a FULL bladder’s worth. I’m pretty sure the 2^nd Gatorade was a little too much. I normally don’t drink a second one, but I always get a really dry mouth when I run and really wanted to make sure I could run the whole 10k without any water because I wasn’t carrying any with me.

For the past 2 weeks prior to this race I had been practicing this process of hydrating up and the only difference was the 2^nd Gatorade I drank…which turned out to be a mistake! I didn’t realize it was actually possible to become TOO hydrated? But…yeah, now I know you totally can! I’ll come back to the pee issues in a moment.

With so many people they considered using delayed start times to let people run in sections, but for whatever reasons they decided against it…BIG mistake! Because we’re not smokin’ awesome runners by any means, we decided to line up in the pack further back so that we wouldn’t be in the way of all the "serious" runners who would become irritated by us slow people in their way.

So picture us standing in a sea of 866 runners, about ¾ of the way back in the mob, and all of us preparing to head out onto a bike trail that was no wider than 8 feet!!! We were so far back we never heard the gun that started the race, but we saw the crowd beginning to shuffle forward and we totally expected people to really start moving once they crossed the start line. The sea of people was so thick I never actually saw the lines where we crossed the start line, so I’m not entirely sure what time it was when we started.

With so many people trying to run on such a narrow trail the whole thing became extremely bottlenecked!!! It was HORRIBLE!!!! You simply could not get through the crowd of people! No one was moving over to the right to let faster runners pass them on the left, no one would move out of your way even if you asked them to, we were simply stuck in the huge mob of really slow runners!

So of course I started to get really pissed because this was really effecting my total run time being unable to get out of and ahead of this huge pack of runners! Finally I yelled to SD to just follow me and I leapt out into the tall brush that runs alongside the trail and we ran in that for at least ½ a mile to get ahead of all these slow people until we could find a spot back on the trail where it was still full of runners, but less busy with a bit more space to move around.

So the whole first mile of the course was a huge bottleneck on this tiny section of trail until the runners began to spread out. The brush we ran through was about 1 ½ feet high and I didn’t manage to get anything on me, but SD’s right sock somehow got totally polka dotted in goat heads which was really funny…not his left sock too, just the right. Anyway, finally we found a place to run on the trail with less people around, but for the 1^st mile it was simply awful!

Now, back to movie night the night before. If you haven’t seen it, then I kind of need to ruin a little piece of the movie for you by telling you this or it won’t make any sense. The main premise of the movie is about this guy who’s trying to win back this girl by running in a marathon except he’s totally out of shape. Well, at the beginning of the running scene in the movie the guy and the new boyfriend who are feuding over the girl start running competitively and the good guy gets tripped and is all bloody on his knee and hands.

So, back to our race, about 1.5 miles into it after we had gotten out of the pack SD was running just a few feet ahead of me weaving in and out through other runners as he periodically looks back to see where I’m at. (because it was often too crowded for us to run side by side while trying to move ahead of other people).

Well, at one point as he starts to look back to find me, he’s running right on the left side edge of the trail, he loses his footing and runs off the edge slightly into a really muddy patch and takes a really hard fall! When he gets up his left hand is all bloody, his left ankle is slightly twisted, his right knee is bloody, and his right arm is scraped all the way down! It was the PERFECT unintentional reenactment of the movie scene!

It was really scary at first and a bunch of people running just behind us gasped and kind of freaked out, but amazingly SD was okay and we keep going. After all the many times we’ve run together, seriously what are the odds that he would end up falling during the actual race? He was bleeding and a mess, but he was okay, so it became really funny as we kept running.

Then, despite peeing 3 TIMES prior to the start of the race, I somehow managed to become way too hydrated and was feeling like I was seriously about to DIE if I didn’t figure out how to empty my bladder AGAIN! There were no bathrooms anywhere along the trail, and I kept trying to convince myself I would have to just suck it up and wait to pee again when it was all over, but my bladder kept insisting we were NOT going to make it!

Finally around 2 miles in I couldn’t stand it anymore and desperately had to pee! But of course there’s hundreds of people all around us and nowhere to go. On one side of that section of the trail is a rock wall that leads up to a street, and on the other side is a bunch of trees and bushes. When I couldn’t wait any longer, I yelled to SD to follow me and cover me and I ran off the course into some bushes and had to squat down and pee like nobody’s business!

SD knelt down a few feet away from me pretending to tie his shoe and I was far enough away from the course that no one would have seen me. That’s NEVER been an issue before, so it was totally hysterical that it would also happen during the race. After all this time, ALL this training and planning, making sure to do everything absolutely right so that there would be NO delays during the actual race, we had already dealt with an extremely slow 1^st mile because of the stupid pack of slow runners, SD had fallen and gotten all bloody, and now I’m off the course and peeing in the bushes! And we’re only 2 miles in to this race! Seriously, what else could go wrong?

By that time I figured our chances of having a really good run time were completely ruined and everything was so totally screwed up that it was one of those either get totally pissed or find everything completely laughable moments. So it was then I decided to take the positive approach and simply forget about having a great run time and simply focus instead on enjoying the run with my husband and spending that moment together, relishing in all the hard work we had done to train over the past months.

After my pee stop we got back on course. The race was supposed to have 2 water stops where cups of water were available to the runners at the 2.5 and 4.0 mile marks. At the first water stop at 2.5 miles they were all OUT of water, which was annoying, but not a big deal since we clearly didn’t need any, but a lot of other runners were really pissed because they were totally relying on this! They also ran out of water at the only other water stop too at 4 miles where when we ran by they were handing out the last few cups.

At about 3.0 miles in I started to get a really bad side cramp on my left which lasted until we were at about 3.5 miles. The rest of our run went well, until we got to BSU. The way the course was laid out, you had to make a big loop around the outside of the stadium first before entering the stadium and the 5kers who were running a separate course merged into that. When we passed by that section, there were a bunch of 5kers being yelled at to turn around because the race markings were confusing and they ran the wrong way. I heard one review from another woman running the 10k that there was so many runners trying to merge in this area when she came by that she got tripped and a big pile up of people happened.

We passed by this section and then outside the stadium SD was also at the point where he couldn’t resist the urge to pee any longer so when he spotted an outhouse up ahead he decided it was his chance. I told him there was no way and he should just wait until we’re done, but he said he would pee really fast and run back to me.

So all of a sudden he sprinted out way in front of me and ran into the outhouse…and from inside the outhouse he yelled, “Keep running, honey, I’ll catch up!” Some of the race crew were standing at that location and they laughed so hard to hear him say that! He did in fact pee really fast and ran out of the outhouse and sprinted back up to me.

We had about 0.5 miles left to go at that point as we rounded the corner around the south end of the stadium. We entered the stadium and had to run 1 lap around the track to get to the finish line. As we ran on the first side of the track we saw our girls and SD's brother took a few photos of us and then we looped around to the other side of the track to finish.

As we began our final huge sprint giving it everything we had left toward the finish all of a sudden some random guy came out of nowhere behind me and right as he passed me he yelled, “Let’s Do This!” in the most hysterical tone that totally cracked me up! It was BEYOND hilarious and made us laugh really hard as we finished! And now, "Let's Do This" has totally become a really hilarious inside joke for us we say all the time, esp. when we're trying to get motivated to workout.

Okay, now some more bad news: as SD's brother raced across the middle of the track to take pictures of us crossing the finish line, just as we were finishing his memory card was FULL! So he ended up with NO pictures of us actually finishing with our really big sprinting push to the end. It turns out that the race coordinators ALSO have no photos of us finishing the race because they decided to set up all their cameras at the section of the track where we first entered! So their photos also don’t show us really giving it everything we had.

And to make things even worse, every single runner who had a gun time over 59:57 min. has NO chip times!!!!! Apparently there was a major glitch in the chip timers they used because over 300 people in the race had NO chip times, including us! [Side note: just in case you don't know what this means, the gun time is the time the race actually started, but obviously all 866 runners cannot cross the start line at the exact same time, so the chip time is the difference between the gun time and the actual time when you personally crossed the start line until the time you cross the finish line].

Which means I have now run in TWO separate races this year…and NEITHER one has given me a true chip time of how long it took me to run! UUGHHHHHH!!!!! About the closest guess we have of what our finish time would have been is by judging from the difference in our gun time, which was 1:05:20min., and considering we were ¾ of the way back in that sea of 866 people we think we could easily subtract at least 3 minutes off our total run time, which means that could have been the absolutely best run time I’ve ever had, but because of the chip time glitch I don’t know for sure. Ugghhh!!!!1

At first they posted the results with simply missing chip times, but later I checked the web site and they went back through and listed chip times about 1 min. less for all those people missing times. Sooooooo frustrating and yet so stinkin’ hilarious too! I mean, we’ve run practice 10k’s every Sat. for months working really hard to make sure everything on the actual race day would go perfectly smooth, and instead Christa can’t even participate, SD falls and gets all bloody, I have to find bushes to pee in, the race runs out of water, SD also has to pee yelling at me from inside the porta potty, crazy “Let’s Do This” guy, no finish pictures, and no chip times!

And just when you thought that was the whole story, it gets even better! To celebrate that evening we planned to go out to dinner and then stay at a hotel in Boise. SD and I went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant we had never tried before, On The Border, which was incredibly delicious (they actually have a separate GF menu and the pulled pork fajitas are to DIE for!) and I tried a new drink I’d never had before that I absolutely LOVED, a red sangria, which is red wine mixed with fruit, burgundy, and some other stuff. Anyway, about 3 feet from our table there just happened to be a girl’s night out birthday party with about 5-6 very boisterous women, who were whooping it up all through the meal.

So we had dinner and a show, with the climax of the meal happening as the waiter brought out the huge sombrero for the birthday girl to wear along with dessert. And as the waiter brought it out the lady sitting next to the birthday girl out of nowhere screams as loud as she possibly can, clapping her hands with excitement, which instantly reminded me of the scene from that Eddie Murphy movie where he’s dressed as a woman, sitting at the table, clapping his hands, and saying, “Hercules, Hercules!”…except this woman was even MORE over the top! I turned to SD and said, “She must be stopped!” at which he almost spit out his food at me from laughing so hard.

Finally, after dinner as we walked back across the street to our hotel, we crossed in front of the movie theater where they often have live music and a bunch of people just hang out. As we were walking by there was a small group of people that looked like a family. Out of nowhere the son stands behind a large light post and all of sudden breaks out into the most revolting looking pole dance craziness I’ve ever seen…now I’m all for watching free pole dancing, but this guy, I'm guessing late 20's, with his extremely large gut was nothing remotely like what a pole dancer should look like!

His family busted up laughing when he did it, and we laughed too as we passed by, and SD said to them, “Some things just can’t be unseen!” They laughed, and we kept laughing at the complete randomness of our entire day…recapping the extremely bizarre odds that all of those strange and unusual things would all happen…at all, and all in the same day! We laughed and laughed at what will truly be an extremely memorable day in our history, what a crazy day our big 10k race day turned out to be!!!

Our very 1st race experience together was so unbelievably crazy and unpredictable...so much so that I think I might almost be disappointed in the future races we run if they're not at least half as crazy at that day turned out to be!