I apologize to any of my readers who might have been eagerly anticipating my race-day experience. I don’t have any good excuses for not writing other than pure laziness. Since my husband has been home I have not gotten anything accomplished.
On November 8th my husband and I went down to the BSB battalion area where the race was being held. Right off the bat I was put in a bad mood because I found out that instead of registering me for the race, the “team captain” had me running with my husband. To clarify, instead of listing me as a contestant on my own standing, she listed us as “Daniel Coddington & Wife”, to run as a single contestant. I was upset, to say the least, because I had been looking forward to this for a while. The “captain” (more on her later) was not there so my husband talked to a few people and got me on the team as an actual contestant.
Side note about the “team captain”. She runs the S-3, or is going to, and she decided that she wanted to start an S-3 team for the race to build camaraderie among the members of the shop, which really is a good idea. The thing is, she signed herself up for the race, then on the day of the race she backed out saying that she had an MRI scheduled sometime in the near future for her knee and could not run. Ok, fine. Later I found out that she had the knee problems before she even deployed, so why on earth would you sign up for a race that you had absolutely no intention of running? It just didn’t make sense to me. Everything worked out in the end, and to give credit to this person she was a great cheerleader and made sure that all of the runners had everything that they needed. Her actions just didn’t make sense to me.
Ok. So I am finally “for real” signed up for the race and I meet all of the team members who all seem really nice. Dan and I set up our camping area, we had a tent, a fire pit, lawn chairs, and tons of goodies, even though it was cold we fully intended on staying the night there.
Did I mention it was cold? I mean, not just cold, but FREEZING. I am so thankful that we brought the fire pit along with us, and that we all brought more than enough clothes to keep us warm. We were considering taking the kids home and being home in shifts so that they could be warm, but they were perfectly content in their sleeping bags and wanted to go “camping”. So, we toughed it out.
Back to the race, things seemed to be going really well. I did my fist 5-mile lap around 6pm, in the dark. I honestly wouldn’t recommend that to anybody who has a choice in the matter because you can’t really see where you’re going, but it was really well lit with chem.-lights and there was no possible way I could have gotten lost (I think if I ran it during the daytime first I would have gotten lost…it doesn’t take much for me). I was going good. I mean, the rough terrain of the trail didn’t seem to bother me, I even passed one lady, I was feeling good, and the songs that were playing on my iPod rocked. I finished my first lap in about 50 minutes, which is a personal best for me. I honestly could have run another lap right away and been okay with it.
So I turn the final corner and can see the finish line. I have no idea what the guy who I was supposed to give the bayonet to looked like. Just a little side bar, instead of running the relay with a baton, we ran it with a bayonet. Those things are HEAVY to run with, my arms got tired and I had to keep on switching it from hand to hand to avoid muscle failure. Anywho, so I don’t know what the guy looked like because he wasn’t around during the introductions. I didn’t see anybody looking like they were ready to take the baton from me, and I get to the finish line and there was still nobody there. Now, I know this isn’t very Christian of me by any means but I’m going to be honest and say that I screamed “where the f*ck is my team?”” I just couldn’t believe that a team member would let me down like that, even thought I was feeling good and could have run another lap right then. The guy had no idea what I looked like either, and when he realized that it was me who he was supposed to replace I heard him sprinting from behind me, I held out the bayonet and he took it from me.
When I got back to our camping area I was told that one of our team members got so drunk playing beer pong that he was going to be useless. Other team members kept on talking about waking him up in a few hours, but I heard that he was passed out and that his wife had him rolled on his side so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. I knew the kids wasn’t going to be of any use to us for at least the rest of the night, but for some reason the others just wouldn’t leave him alone.
I have to say that I was disappointed with the rest of the race. I “ran” my second lap at about 2am, but before that I was talking to some of the other team mates who already had bad attitudes and were talking about quitting. I wanted to run my second lap but the other team mates convinced me to walk it so that it would take up more time. Most everyone else from the other teams were walking by this point so it wasn’t like it was out of the ordinary to be asked this, but if I wanted to run it they should have let me run it. So I walk my second lap, get back, and find that one soldier was arrested for a DUI and another from the battalion was accused of kidnapping his daughter, so the atmosphere for the rest of the night was shot. One of our team members was too drunk to run, another was upset because she ended up having to run two laps in a row because another team member failed to be at the finish line to relieve her, and another missed his wife or something and went home, but not before he tried to convince the rest of the team to quit to. I have to admit that I was a bit put off by all this. We are supposed to be running this race to honor the 173rd soldiers who sacrificed all in combat, and the battalion had just lost 4 soldiers not even three months ago. These people knew what they were signing up for, why on earth (barring illness or injury) would they even think about quitting? There was one point where my husband and I were prepared to finish the race ourselves if need be, just taking turns running the final laps. There was no way we were going to quit.
So just before my third and last lap our team captain approached me and told me that I didn’t need to run the last lap, that our team had done enough and that I should stay back and hang out with my family since “that is what this is all about”. Um, NO, it’s really all about honoring fallen soldiers, and there was no way I was going to quit just before my last lap. So I ran/walked my last lap and came in when the race tracker said 23:50, I couldn’t have timed it any better if I had tried.
For my husband, kids, and I the race was a great thing. We got to go “camping” and bond as a family, and Dan and I bonded over running the even together. I got to meet a few of the people my husband would be working with so it was nice to get to know them. I was disappointed with the attitude of some of my team mates, but next year (if we’re still here) we will be a bit more selective as to who we run with. All in all it was a great experience and one that I would do all over again if I had to.
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