Fast Times at Pre-Pregnancy High

Lately I've been having dreams about running and playing Ultimate. It might have something to do with the fact that I like to bring my cleats to bed and lull myself to sleep by caressing them and cooing, "I miss you," over and over. I used to have a much healthier relationship with my athletic equipment. For example, last Thanksgiving I did NOT lick my running sneakers at all, and instead just used them to run the Applied Materials Silicon Valley Turkey Trot 5K. I'm hesitant to call it a race, because although some people thought of it as such, I think the rest of the 6,000 people who 'ran' it were hoping to rationalize eating three different kinds of pie later on that day.

I started training for the race a good seven weeks beforehand. It was my first 5K, so my main motivation was to avoid embarrassing myself. (Okay... it's also because I'm insanely competitive. To me, there is no such thing as a "Fun Run". Running is something to be done faster than other people, or at least as fast as you can go without puking.) I printed a calendar with workouts listed for each day. I slowly built up the mileage. I did sprints. I had time goals. I did longer runs once per week. I even tried to practice running the course once, although I ended up in a Target parking lot (where the race did not go, by the way) and eventually walked back to the car, but I tried.

This year, I have two goals. One: to finish without walking (maybe). Two: to not scream, "I could have kicked your ass a year ago!" at the octogenarians with walkers whose dust I'll be eating. I was thinking I could duct tape my mouth shut, but that might interfere with the whole breathing thing. Meh, it's a secondary goal anyway. They probably won't even be able to hear me, what with the wind whistling in their hearing aids and all.