The Tortoise & The Hare

For the past several months, my sister and I have been training to run the Med Center 10K race in Bowling Green. We were really pumped to do it when we initially signed up, but during the last two weeks leading up to the event, our motivation for running 6 miles on a Saturday morning pretty much fizzled out.

But what we were totally excited about was the chance to spend some quality sister hang out time together. So Friday around lunchtime, I dropped Miss Amelia off to her grandparents and headed down to Bowling Green. It was very difficult for me to say goodbye to my sweet girl for 24 hours but deep down I knew that it was probably a good thing for both of us. We are a bit on the clingy side to each other.

So I arrived at Beth's house around 2:00 pm. We talked and talked and talked all afternoon and night. It was great! And I got the chance to spend some time with my favorite nephew for a little while too and watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I love that he associates all the holidays with watching the Charlie Brown movies with his Aunt Mimi.

So Friday night Beth fixed us some much needed carb-tastic pasta & we settled in to watch a movie in our fleece robes like the couple of old bitties that we are.

Saturday morning came way too fast and we were both dragging around the house trying to get our bodies woken up asking ourselves why we were about to put ourselves through such torture for absolutely no good reason.

So race time came & we were off. We had established beforehand that we wouldn't try to stick together the whole time. If one of us took off faster, then so be it. It was every sister for herself.

My philosophy on getting through any race is to maintain a slow and steady pace. The moral of the story of the tortoise & the hare really resonates with me so I never try to run fast whatsoever. My darling sister on the other hand, had a slightly different running philosophy. She did a sort of run walk run walk run walk dance the entire 6.2 miles.

We also differed on running styles in that I absolutely HAD to have my music playing or else I would not have survived. Period. My Salt-n-Pepa Pandora radio did not let me down on Saturday as it played such gems as Ice Ice Baby and the Humpty Dance. Beth told me after the race that she turned off her music around mile 4 and started chatting up the people around her in order to push herself through to the end (even asking a lady cheering on the sidelines who was in a wheelchair if she would give her a lift up the hill!).

But no matter how different our styles may have been, we both made it to the finish line within two minutes of each other. My time was around 1 hour 10 minutes and Beth was right behind me at 1 hour 12 minutes. So technically, the tortoise did win the race. Even if it was only by a "hare".