Walkies!

OK, I know this doesn’t sound like me, but there was this walk/run/thing on Saturday to commemorate the opening of this new trail that runs around our new, FUTURISTIC AND FABULOUS hospital. And I did it. And I did it VOLUNTARILY. No weapons of any kind were put to my head! It was kind of a work thing, in that the people that I did it with were pretty much work chums. Since it’s so not me to get up early on a Saturday at all, let alone to walk 5k, I’m not sure why I joined in. Whatever.

Now even though I, myself, started this by saying this doesn’t sound like me it was still super-annoying how many people acted like it was some kind of modern miracle that I was going to do it. And there were a bunch of people who offered to come get me in their cars on the path if I couldn’t finish it. (they were probably kidding. Still annoying!) Come on people, I do bike 30 miles to and from work each week! I tap dance for a couple of hours a week! I chase after my best friends kids whenever I can. And, most importantly, I RARELY use sound judgment when deciding what to do with my body! Case in point: right before the walk I’m surrounded by people eating healthy breakfasts and drinking out of their healthy water bottles, as I sit in my car finishing my ice-cold Pepsi and McDonalds hashbrown. So a spontaneous 3.1 mile stroll sounds JUST like something I would do.

Tangent: I stopped off at the McDonalds for my strategically planned breakfast food (because I already had the Pepsi perfectly chilled, but can’t just drink a Pepsi with nothing salty to go with it! That would be CRAZY!! And so OBVIOUSLY that meant McDonalds hashbrowns) and I’m perfectly on time and only a few blocks from the trail, right? But then I watch as the dude in front of me (who spent a LONG TIME giving his order, so I knew he was either getting a LOT of food or had asked for the nutritional breakdown on every single item on their breakfast menu) pull up and get handed a petite little bag. Much too small for all his ordering. But just the right size for one woman’s morning hashbrowns. And then I watched the interaction between this guy and the confused and fairly shellshocked (or still hung-over?) drive thru girl and it became clear that they’d somehow lost his whole order. But they had my hashbrowns! And the clock’s ticking and I’m now officially into the “running late” window and he’s STILL talking and she’s even more confused, and has tried to give him my hashbrowns a second time and I HAVE GOT TO GO!!! Finally I pulled out of line, pulled up next to lost-his-order guy and got out of my car. I walked around the nose of his car and started to knock on the now-closed window, completely freaking out everyone inside the place, who are clearly all discussing how people are just not supposed to walk up to the window and DEFINITELY aren’t supposed to knock on the window, and who has to go talk to the crazy, intense and hungry-looking crazy lady? At last they open the window and I ask for my paid-for and ready-to-go little bag of hashbrowns there on the counter right there, right next to the bigger bags, no not that one, no the little one, the one you keep trying to give to this guy (who starts to assure me that he never did anything to my hashbrowns, like I’m afraid he managed to lick them during one of the times they pushed them at him – not worried, buddy!) GIVE ME MY HASHBROWNS I HAVE TO GO!

Needless to say, I got my hashbrowns and arrived just barely in time. End of tangent.

I will have you know, my friends and scoffers alike, that I finished that 5k walk! And I did it in UNDER an hour! And that my feet didn’t even hurt and I didn’t fall down in a heap or come home and collapse or anything! That is right! Take that, people who may or may not have been kidding when they offered to come rescue from my ill-thought-out spontaneous exercise!

New, shiny white walking shoes: $45
Walk registration fee: $15
Official walk t-shirt: $5
McDonalds hasbrowns: $1
20-minute mile bragging rights: priceless.