Keeping the Faith

After catching up on some of my linked blogs, I realized how interesting my friends are. So I think I’d better spice mine up again and talk about cool things I’m doing. Or at least make them up so people keep reading this blog.
On Friday, one of my old college friends and co-worker stopped by my desk. For weeks now he’s been telling me about this marathon he’s running in October and how I should join. How I suddenly strike him as a marathon runner, I’ll never know. Maybe it was the box of brownies I keep at my desk? Or the Skittles I have in my paperclip holder instead of paperclips? But he’s brought it up incessantly. I’ve known the kid for four years and now he’s on a personal mission to recruit me. My boyfriend is very suspicious of this and only allows me to socialize with him without complaint because this friend is shorter then me. And we all know I have rules about that.
So anyway, he starts emailing the information about their weekly meetings and practices with his running team. I have to stop myself from replying to each one with “I’m sorry, but this would really cut into my lying around time.”
This week he actually piqued my interest by telling me that you could also run a half marathon. OK, 13 miles of torture seems much more achievable then 26. Now I’m officially 10% interested.
But actually, I have started taking an interest in running. I’ve figured out how to run through my cursed family side stitch and have been utilizing my condo’s gym to run on the treadmill ever week. My I-Pod is also well equipped with a “Running” play list, so I’m clearly ready to run.
So my friend tells me that their first official run of the warm up season is on Saturday at 7:30. That would be 7:30 AM. I had to check to see if this time actually did exist on a Saturday morning. It did. And he wanted me to join him and his group in a three mile run at that time to figure out “pace groups.” I kindly explained to him that this ungodly running time would cut into my Friday night out and that at 7:30 AM I planned on stumbling home and falling asleep sideways on my bed with my clothes still on. So I sent him on his way.
It turns out Friday night was a particularly tame one and at 7 AM Saturday morning I woke up feeling fresh as a daisy and thought, “I think I’m going to go run.” The next thing I know I’m running around a lake 20 miles from my house and have made a “pace group” friend and was chugging through the home stretch of my third mile, without breaking a sweat.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m officially signed up for the half marathon in October. I’m mostly doing this to compete with Charlie and his efforts to run the San Francisco marathon that I’ve been reading about in his blog. OK, not really, but I thought I’d throw that out there.
After our final stretching and cool down sessions, all the runners gathered around and my work friend said “OK everyone, let’s all say a prayer.” Huh? A what? Oh crap. It all came rushing back to me that my friend is super Catholic. Oh crap, what have I gotten myself into? I just joined a Christian marathon training group! And they already have my registration form! After our prayer circle ended and I uncomfortable lunged for my keys to get the hell out, the leader girl said there were a few more announcement. She showed off that by joining the marathon, we got a fancy tote bag. She added that it was perfect size to fit your Bible. Seriously.
Everyone was really nice to me and they invited me to a meeting on Monday night, in which I can only imagine I would have been officially inducted into their cult. I’m going to have to bring my I-Pod next time and when they start busting out the running prayers, I’ll just cue up some Britney Spears.