Tuesday, June 12, 2012

He Ran next to Me

So I have never been one to say that I LOVE running. In fact most of the girls/boys in my P.E. class in high school can confirm that RUNNING and I  did not get along. It was always so "awesome" when one of the girls would run with me in PE and say "I am going to take it easy today and run with you" meanwhile I was DYING just to keep my body from collapsing. Again, we did not get along. 

But as I got older I found a respect for running. I found that running kept my crazy stress brain in check, it showed me that my legs don't have to look like huge tree trunk lumps but they could actually have...get this...muscle tone! And then after I had my darling child I found that running was the best way to get my body back (that and Jillian Michaels, ugh that lady I love/hate). Then last year running introduced me to my husband. Okay I had the husband first, but he started running with me again after taking a 10 yr break due to a high school church basketball injury that required 3 knee surgeries. This boy was a cross country junky before his accident so as we started running he began to get back into his old habit of "lets chat it up while running 'cause it makes the time go by faster" and so our runs sounded a lot like this.

Brenton: "So babe what are the things that you want to do in your life?"
Jazz: "uh...(huff)....(gasp)...um..it...could....be...fun...to....(gasp)....travel"
Brenton: "Oh yeah? Where would you like to go?" 
Jazz: "(gasp)...um....I dunno....(huff)....lets...talk....later"

He later learned to just ask yes no questions.

So here we were, Memorial Day 8am starting our first 10K race together. I told him we should run the whole time holding hands because we loved each other so much. Soon after the race began I realized that my legs did not want to be running a 6.2 mile race. There was much complaining from them "why are you doing this to us?....you didn't ask us if we wanted to run today....you haven't run in a week so why would you think we could do this today?" Such complainers those legs of mine. Well against their will, I ran them 6.2 miles. It was hard, I had to do a lot of internal digging to keep myself from stopping. It didn't help that it was the hottest morning EVER and they ran out of water to hand out around mile 4. But I did it. It also helped that I had some nice eye candy running next to me the whole time.

He ran next to me....and no we didn't hold hands. Next time though!