one of the the things i love about my good blogmate is that, like my father, she has blind faith in my abilities. this faith gives me the false belief that i can, in fact, do the things she thinks i can.
for a while we can both feel good about ourselves.
but then it all breaks down.
in her ever patient indulgence of my triathlon and boy-meeting fantasies, my blogmate helpfully suggested that ck and i participate in a ride n' tie (some kind of bike/run race) last week, as a first peak into the world of the chicago tri world, and a way to jump start the winter training.
seems like a good idea, right? ck was up for it because, well, ck is always up for anything (which is perhaps the thing the collective jo-na loves most about her), and neither she nor i were too worried that the description of this event was a little vague on the website.
we started to get nervous when ck picked up the race packets. "organized chaos," was how the guy described it.
as it turns out, the ride n' tie isn't so much as a competitive biking and running as it is sprint training for crazy people. we probably should have realized that only people of a certain disposition are up and out at 8AM for a late november race in schaumburg. we also probably should have realized that we are not of said disposition. we also should have realized that the biking was just a way to make the time between the sprints SHORTER.
after much swearing and complaining and passing each other up on the course muttering to each other about the drinks the instigator of this madness was going to buy us, we finally limped across the finish line. 10 miles. two people. one bike. much running. much pain. MANY crazy people. we felt pretty bad about our 2nd-to-last place finish until we realized that the winners came in at a sub-five-minute pace.
we felt much better about ourselves once it was all over, and have been alternating states of soaring triumph and searing pain, wondering just who we think we are.
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8 comments:
jo-na, why have you not yet adopted my thinking about races and such? i'm always so impressed with myself for getting out of bed, off the couch, away from the Internet, out of the store, whatEVER, that i can barely believe how awesome i am. disappointed about finishing second to last? please. :)
-sm
jo-na, why have you not yet adopted my thinking about races and such? i'm always so impressed with myself for getting out of bed, off the couch, away from the Internet, out of the store, whatEVER, that i can barely believe how awesome i am. disappointed about finishing second to last? please. :)
-sm
some nice fella lets me use his internet, and sometimes it goes all pear-shaped, which results in multiple commentage. -sm
i agree with sm! as my former roommate so eloquently put it, it's all non-caloric time. plus - and i ask the rest of our readership to chime in here - guys don't care if you're fast, or good at sports! all you need is to put yourself out there, talk about how much you enjoy being outside or whatever it is, and just have enough breath left to flirt and tell the guy how awesome and fast *he* is.
that being said, i owe you both beer.
I guess it helps. But if you pulled said guy from beneath the warm covers on a cold November morning and made him suffer with you through a gulag-style event such as that one, you'd find yourself demanding drinks from your friends at some dive bar as your sulk about your recent "break-up".
Or you could date one of those crazy race guys, but that's its own can of maggots.
really? you'd break up with a girl because she made you wake up early to go play outside? even if at the end there were warm drinks and napping? that just sounds like our friends who claim women shouldn't drink whiskey straight because it's not ladylike.
true, though, about the crazy race guys. being engaged to one, i can safely say that for an entire half of the year, weekends are pretty all-pasta-dinner-no-beer. also none of our pictures of each other are terribly attractive, what with the spandex or winter-gear or bad hair.
Maybe I misspoke. I am just not a morning person, so dragging me out in the cold would make me very grumpy. I don't think I'd break up with her, though. I'd just frown a lot, in the mid-western, passive-aggressive way.
i'm glad we've cleared that all this up - i was a little uncomfortable with the use of the word "maggot" on the blog, especially when conceptually associated with mb- i would argue he's one of the good guys.
also, now that i'm literally held together with tape (it's useful to have physical therapist friends), i'd like to remind people that i get uneasy when words like "meniscus" and "torn" are used in the same sentence.
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