Survival of the (Not) Fittest

It was an exciting morning. I jumped out of bed at 5:30am, chewed through my peanut butter English muffin, drank about 5 pints of water, showered and dressed. Eventually it was time to meet Courtney, and she swung by and picked me up.

She chose a parking garage by the finish line and then we walked to the corner of 1st and Royal Brougham for the bus that would take us to the start of the race.

Fast forward.

People. A crush of people. In green. Some clever uses of the color, but also some very tight spandex green pants, green hair, and a lot of parents pushing strollers into the backs of other people's legs. People. Everywhere.

I forgot I'm only a few steps away from panicking when I find myself in the center of a crowd. And fun runs are essentially one big crowd playing dress up.

We stood around, in the crowd, for about 45 minutes as people pushed closer and closer together. Courtney was a great sport, she stuck with me the whole time. When we finally got to start, I jogged for awhile and then I got tired of -- the slight incline we were on -- dodging bodies. Some girl tapped us on the shoulder to get by. It was a constant crush of moving bodies, wanting to be where you were, for most of the race.

I didn't like that.

So I stopped trying. I just walked as fast as I could, which isn't so terrible. It was a beautiful day, a little chilly but manageable, and the course took us over the viaduct in a rare opportunity to tread on road normally reserved for high speed motorists.

I should mention that Courtney's pace would have been faster but she walked with me instead. So when I tell you that a man with a bar strapped to his back -- a wooden shelf and several large bottles of booze -- passed me, jogging, you can infer that he only passed her because she was being nice. And no, I was not hallucinating.

I'm not sure of my exact finish time but it was somewhere less than an hour and somewhere more than 45 minutes. Results will be posted today.

At the end of the race we scored some free cheese and potato chips, and I got a little cup of soup that hit the spot. The beer gardens were packed, but we couldn't go to a St. Patty's Day Dash without having at least one beer. So we walked down the street to the Elysian and saw out the afternoon.

And that's the story of Christy's first race. The end.