What a Weekend!

Last weekend I had back-to-back big days.  Saturday was the Mesa-Phoenix half marathon, which I had been stressing about for weeks.  My training was derailed in January-- both by J's two weeks in the hospital and by a knee injury when I ran the 17k trail race-- and I was very worried I would not be able to run the whole race.  (On bad days when it felt like my knee was going to give out at any moment, I wondered if I would even be able to finish.)  But I was determined to do it anyway.  Four years ago the race announced that the next five years would have medals depicting the "5 C's" of Arizona: Copper, Cattle, Cotton, Citrus & Climate.  (Yeah, Arizona probably needs to diversify a bit.)  If you earned all five of those medals, either by completing the full marathon or the half, your medals put together would form a star.  "Earn the Star!" they announced.

I was hooked.

I like this race anyway, since it's one of the few major races held on Saturday.  Plus it's flat.  (Well, the half course is flat.  The full marathon is a whole different story.)  So I immediately set the goal to earn my star.  It hasn't been easy.  Every year I have added to my injuries and my chronic problems.  It's becoming painfully obvious that my long distance running days are numbered.  But I had earned the Copper, Cattle, and Cotton medals; I wasn't going to give up now, uncooperative knee or not.

So I found myself at the starting line last Saturday morning in the freezing cold with a brace on my right knee and four thousand other runners waiting in line for one last visit to the porta potties.   It took a couple of miles into the race before I warmed up and tossed my sweatshirt, but by the time I got that far I settled into a steady rhythm and my knee didn't bother me at all.  It left me free to enjoy the people watching during the race!

Some observations:

• A mother/son duo (where the son was about 9 or 10) passing me.  Wow, you go, kiddo!  Only less than a mile later I passed them, with the poor boy gasping to his mother that he was going to throw up.  Kudos to him though, he didn't give up.  
• A participant in a wheelchair who was smoking us all and doing all the hard work with her arms only.
• "Yeah, that's why I drink beer," one lady said to the guy with her as the passed me.  "Because then I know it's full of calories so I don't drink too much and then I don't get drunk."  Her companion replied, "Yeah once I had this drink that was like 8,000 calories."  (Another reason to be glad I don't drink alcohol I guess.  Holy moly!!  8,000 calories?  What was he drinking???)
• At about mile 9, when I turned the corner into downtown Mesa and realized I still had AN HOUR of running ahead of me, the man ahead of me suddenly burst into loud, inexplicable laughter.  Like he couldn't breathe or talk because he was laughing so hard.  WTH????  (When I passed him I realized he was on his cell phone.  Someone must have told him a really good joke, I guess!)
• Another runner I passed on a cell phone was asking if her son had thrown up again, followed by "What about you?  How are you feeling?  What about A, B, or C?  Have any of them thrown up?"  Poor hubby.  Stuck at home with the puking kids while Mom is running her race.  I guess her kids were lucky.  If it was mine they would have been stuck without Mom or Dad. (Terence was working the opening day of the Renaissance Festival).
• Nearing the finish line-- a pair of younger ladies just edging past me.  One of them kept shouting "We're almost there!  You can do it!  Don't stop!  Push!" while the other one kept choking out "I'm gonna puke!"  "No, you got this!  Don't stop!"  Finally, another guy running near us said, "Don't worry, she's annoying me too!"  After that the drill sergeant gave up her orders (encouragement?)

I crossed the finish line with a time of 2:22:53, which was better than I was expecting!  (I was hoping for a 2 hr 30 minute finish.)  It was nowhere near my best time, but considering the circumstances I am quite proud of myself.  Best of all, I have my Citrus medal!!  One more to go to get my star!

The next day (Sunday) was NOT a day of rest.  It was quite an exciting day for us-- President Nelson (who is our prophet) and President Oaks (another top leader) from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to the valley.  They held a devotional in the State Farm Stadium (that's where the Cardinals NFL team plays) on Sunday night.  Tickets were distributed to all the wards in the general area, but there were not enough for everyone to go, so the devotional was also broadcast to many of the chapels.  I didn't expect to go to the stadium-- our ward received about 85 tickets, and we had far more people than that who wanted to attend.

Lucky me though!  I got formally invited to be a chauffeur, taking Kristi and three of her kids, as well as Valerie (an older sister in our ward).  I am not stressed out by freeway driving, and the stadium is on the other end of the valley from us (LOTS of freeway driving).  

I was, however, highly stressed out by all the logistics of getting there on time.  Being on time is kind of bred into my DNA-- or pounded into my psyche by my father (who also cannot stand to be late to anything).  We needed to be in our seats by 5:30 pm (or our seats would be opened to others).  Since our regular church meetings didn't end until 2pm, it was going to be a tight race.  I had to run the kids home from church super quick and drop them off, and then pick up the others and head out.  At least that was the plan.

There ended up being a few unscheduled stops, including picking up someone else's tickets and delivering them to Terence at the church.  Last minute we also ended up including another ward member in our carpool group-- Matthew.  By the time we were finally headed up to the freeway it was 3pm.

No worries, right?  Kristi mapped it and the drive would only take us 1 hour 20 minutes.  Should leave us plenty of time to get Valerie in the wheelchair and up to her seat before 5:30, right?

Hahahahaha!!!!

No.

Oh my gosh, the traffic.  

5:30 came and went while we were still stuck in the nightmare of trying to get off the freeway at the stadium exits.  Luckily we were able to park in the ADA lot, so that part went smoothly.  But by this point we didn't even know if we would have seats any more.

We made it through the security lines and hurried for the gate listed on our tickets.  Unfortunately, I think Matthew was about to die (he only has one lung) and our gate was on the complete opposite side of the stadium from the ADA parking.  We did get stopped by a security guy though, who ushered us in a different door that led to the elevator.  (Thank goodness for Valerie's wheelchair!!!)

Once we got up to our level we ran into the next problem.  We needed a wheelchair spot for Valerie, and the ushers at the disability seating section informed us we needed to go downstairs to guest services and get our tickets changed.  WHAT?!  Why didn't they tell us that when we were downstairs? At this point it was ten minutes before the start of the devotional.

Matthew went off to find his seat-- he was hoping it was still available, while the rest of us pled our case to the ushers.  At this point we lucked out.  Another family from our ward was seated in the disability section, and there were four empty seats next to them.  The ushers kindly let us have the seats (and looked the other way while Kristi's daughter sat on the floor).

Just in time! (And just in time for me to race for the bathroom.  Seriously, long drives and my bladder do not get along.)

It was an amazing experience!!  My favorite part was listening to Wendy Watson Nelson, who is married to President Nelson.  She told some fascinating stories about what it is like to be married to a prophet.

After the devotional we headed back out into more traffic (it was a full stadium, after all) and somehow, even though I was exhausted from two very, very long days, I managed to be awake and alert driving all the way home.

But as you can imagine, I was quite grateful to climb in my bed that night.  Monday was actually a break in comparison!