Dignity? I don't need no freakin' dignity.

Last year when I ran the 10K Milk Run down in Vermont my doors were blown off by elementary school children. Seriously. Despite months and months of training children were zipping past my aged carcass.

Wait.

It gets worse.

I was also passed by a gaggle of women in their 60's and 70's one of whom was limping slightly because, I later learned, she'd had a hip replacement. Yep, a geriatric semi-cripple beat my time.

There are those who are born to run and then there is me.

Any thinking person would assume that last year's experience was humiliation enough, but apparently it is not. Today I mailed in my $12 registration fee so that on June 5 I can again get my butt handed to me on a plate.

I hope that a few people from my gym will also run so that I will at least recognize a few of the faces passing me by, but it's not looking good. My friend Laurette (who ran with me last year) has been felled by a bad back. Patty, who buck bucked me into getting back into training, has had to drop out because her mom-in-law has been seriously ill.

Joel is not sure he wants to run the race because he doesn't feel his times are particularly good. I keep pointing out that I can guarantee that he will beat at least one person (me) but so far it appears that his appetite for humiliation is no where near as great as mine.

*Sigh*.

So what's the point of doing this, if I won't be able to hang out with people I like, if I don't have a snowball's hope in hell of posting even a vaguely respectable time? Why bother if I will again have my doors blown off by children and geriatric semi-cripples?

Well, there's always the hope that a few of the older women have died.

There's that.

(Although, frankly, I'm guessing those tough old broads are going to outlast me by a long shot because they've got a lot more game than I do. I'm not clutching too hard on the death straw.)

Nope, what I'm focussing on here is personal best.

I am a craptastic runner. I'm clumsy, balance-challenged, and one of the least athletically gifted people you will ever meet. But practicing running helps me with those things. It also strengthens my body and it toughens my spirit by forcing me to push myself beyond where it's comfortable.

So a week from Sunday I will haul my aged carcass down to Vermont, half kill myself to run 6.2 miles while I watch young children and geriatric semi-cripples effortlessly motor on past me.

I know my time will be pitiful, but if it is even slightly less pitiful than last year, then for me it's a triumph. An itsy bitsy teensy weensy triumph, but hey, it's not the size of the triumph? Right? RIGHT?

Does it ever get easier?

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 629.69 miles. Half way there. Oh, man, please let this be over