The Big Day

Oh Shizz. It was race day.
It was cold and dreary. Freezing, actually for June. In other words PERFECT weather for me! I am all about the colds and damps they give me the warm and fuzzies.
The race was at 7PM and let me tell YOUS it was a long day. I had to work, and I thought about running. I had many important things to do and between the crazies happening in my stupid irritable stomach and my brain misfiring from my sabout the intensity of the competition I was not feeling my best. And all I could think about was running which to be honest, was most disturbing...
Around 4PM knowing that I had a long drive I got my business together, took some pepto, ate some Doritos and prepared to hit the fricking road. I prayed not to be literally hitting the road in a few hours. My Dad caught me on the way out (I work in close proximity to my parents house, bless their little hearts..) He said "Want me to go with you?" I said "No, you will be bored as hell, I might throw up on you and it will be all girls there so it will not be exciting for you." He argued that point, like any sensible man would but accepted that I would be fine on my own. (I am 30 after all, gosh.) I planned to leave at 4:20. At 4:18 I called my Dad back and said "I changed my mind. I want you to come with me." Like a good Dad 2 minutes later he was in his yard ready to go with a cooler of snacks and something that looked suspiciously like airplane sick bags (must be prepared!)
I told mah Dad about my paranoia of coming in dead last and he scoffed (my Dad is big on scoffing, and that it the only word to describe it. Hmmm.) We saw strange things on the drive that were amusing enough to make me feel a lot better (people fighting in the road. cars with hatchbacks wiiiide open, threatening to spill their contents on the road side. a raised staircase going nowhere, or perhaps to heaven. Anyhooo, I digress..)
We got there. I registered. There were a crap ton of people there. And a lot of ladies in tha spandex... You can tell how serious a runner a person is by the amount of spandex they wear, and by the looks of things everyone was a fricking Olympian.
We all lined up, and there was a lot of pomp and circumstance because we were raising money for cancer research which made me feel good about paying to be tortured. My Dad wished me good luck and we were OFF!
Immediately I was in a superbad clusterfuck of people which I was not too keen on. Using my back country badass street skills I ran around the crowd, thru the puckerbrush, jumped over a few trees and basically put it in 4WD until I got thru the madness. Once I had distanced myself slightly from the cluster I realised that I was setting a much more blistering pace that I had intended to but I just said what the hell since it was so cold. (the logic? I would not get horribly dehydrated? I would not gasp too badly for air? No idea what the thought process was but that was it.)
I made it to the first mile marker at the time of 6:14 which is absolutely insane and make me kick myself a bit. I was pretty nervous that I was going to burn out by mile 2 and have to cry for mercy, on an emergency vehicle. I took a quick system check and found that other than being somewhat out of breath I felt fine. I adjusted my pace a bit and kept on.
At about mile 1.5 we had to climb a large flight of stairs and sprint across a big field. Many of the people in front of me were tiring. To motivate myself I made a game of passing them (then beating them up so they could not catch me and pass me... Kidding, kidding...) By the time we all reached mile 2 I had passed quite a few people and I was still feeling pretty decent. (my inner monologue was chanting things like "this would suck it it was hot" and "keep on running slacker, it's only 3 miles fattie) and so forth.)
I passed my Dad just after mile 2 and in shock he waved me on "You're doing GOOD" he shouted as I double arm fist pumped like the geek that I am.
Nearing the end of mile 2 I really slowed down, but nobody was hot on my heels so I was cool with it. The last 0.1 felt long, and I was wishing for oxygen, a couch, or perhaps a swift death to save me any more agony. But I pushed on like a trooper. Or a crazy person.
The finish line was quite festive so it was exciting to cross, (with more fist pumping, and perhaps shouting "I'm Great" "Go ME" and other nonsense...) And my time?? (wait for it!) A blistering, record setting, clearly Olympic gold medal winning 23:11! OK, so maybe not all those things but clearly the fastest time I had ever managed, run on pure crackhead adrenaline with no good choices being made (6:14 first mile, anyone?) I placed (wait for it...) TWELFTH, out of 500 ladies. I jumped up and down! I drank wine! I got a medal (yeah, so did everyone but I don't care!) My Dad saw people he knew so he had fun! And I barely even made him wait because I was so fast! Exclamation POINT!
I was very pleased with my first real race and even more pleased to feel just fine the following day. But the thing I was most thrilled with: NO VOMMING!!!
And the all important thing that I was NOT pleased with? The next day I looked at my legs, or to be specific my inner thighs. They were covered with red, raised, pustulating poision ivy. WTF? I had to put on my thinking cap and was brought back to a time when I got competitive and ran agressively thru some puckerbrush to get to the front of the pack... A bit more musing and I remembered a bit of post race stretching that involved the placement of the shoe on the inner thigh. I spent the next two weeks scratching my thighs like I had a serious personal problem, scabies, ringworm or something highly contagious (all the while announcing loudly to the world that I did NOT have those problems and only had the poision ivy of doom... good times.)