My starting point

I am capital E, capital X, capital H, capital A, capital U, capital S, capital T, capital E, capital D period!

Wow…what a weekend it has been, but one that definitely dictates that I write this blog. First things first, sorry for the hiatus, life gets busy. My Mac charger decided to stop working a few months ago, just in time for summer chaos. Since it was summer, I didn’t miss it that much because we were always on the go. The Captain got me a new charger recently and slowly but surely I’ve been using it again. During the time that my Mac was down, I depended a lot more on my iPhone. You know, it’s truly amazing that I can do just about everything on that device! Anywho, I started to bottle up a lot of things I need to blog about and I have an iPhone full of notes for topics…this weekend though was inspiration enough to start again.
It all started with a tweet. This tweet gives a whole new meaning to be careful what you say. One evening I was checking my timeline and saw a tweet from Erica Ehm. I’d met Erica earlier this year and I love what she and her team have done and are doing with The Yummy mummy Club. That aside, Erica’s tweet was about joining her team for the RBC Run for Kids. I replied to her tweet saying, sound interesting…maybe I should give it a go. 10 minutes later, my phone rang…it was Erica.

She was all excited and started speaking Hebrew to me about the ‘opportune moment’; I was all excited cause I was like ‘this is unreal!’…two excited parties usually means something’s about to go down that you’d either regret or fully enjoy. In this case, the end of that Hebrew-English, yummy mummy to yummy mummy conversation brought along an agreement for me to take part in the 5K run for this families of youth with mental health issues. I was still unsure whether I’d regret or enjoy this decision.

To make sure that I didn’t procrastinate, ‘forget’ or change my mind, I signed up right away. You see two years earlier I made a pact with my friend Penny to start running with her…neither of us ever ran before so it was perfect…we could…you know…learn together. Two years later, Penny has run many races and I quietly like each of her Facebook posts…embarrassed that I’m still sitting on my behind. So I sign up. Not only do I sign up, but I sign up The Captain and the boys. Then I send an email out to my family and friends that I’ve done this and I need their help and support in the form of donations. Accountability is the best.

Daddy donated right away with a sizeable donation and a challenge to beat his time (he’s the constant competitor), his donation challenged my sisters to try to top his…a good effort on their part…my family is quite competitive (the competitive gene TOTALLY missed me…like TOTALLY!). Then friends donated…even random soccer moms that I met for the very first time this summer donated. Wow…I’m in deep. Like really, really deep…this is a do or die (of embarrassment) kinda deep.
So I have all these donations…what now? Well, that was simple…I’ve gotta run. Maybe I should try training. Ok…training. Can I wear my Chucks? Sai was like ‘Mom, you’ve got to be kidding me…no you cannot wear your Chucks’. Ok…I can’t wear my Chucks. I need shoes. I was torn, do I super invest in good runners knowing that I may never use them again or do I cheap out. What’s the ROI? I invested in good runners. Training began.

My very first time training with Sai, we went to the local park and my legs started to itch like I was being attacked by ants. I kid you not, I could have stripped right down in the middle of the park to scratch my itch, it was that bad. Finally made it home and the boys took good care of me. The itch apparently was my body going into severe shock that it need to get blood to my muscles…my body was shocked that I was exercising. This is not going very well.

Somewhere along the line, Michelle (you remember her from this post?), tells me that she’s signed up for the run and she and her kids, D and J, will be doing it with me. Did I mention how much I love this girl? She’s way more fit than I am, she eats healthy…she’s perfect when it comes to health and fitness…I have no idea how we’re friends!

It’s the night before race day, Mich and I talk to make final arrangements and off to sleep I go. The morning of the race, I get up, get ready, wake Sai, he gets ready and we both come downstairs for a small bite to eat. (The Captain will stay home with Noey because…well…Noey was feigning sleep). Eat, washroom, shoes. Shoes! The runners that I invested in…where are they? Well…Sai (he wears the same size as me) took them to school to use for cross-country training and yup…they’re in his locker. The Captain is tres disappointed in Sai, I’m thinking ‘what am I going to wear; they told me my Chucks won’t do’. Then I remember I had these cool Nike shoes that I got for a golf tournament a few years ago that I wore like once. These will have to do. Off to the race.

It’s pouring rain by the time we get to the start line. Like pouring. Countdown starts and we’re off. Sai and D look back to Mich, J and myself and they’re like ‘see ya at the hoops…we’re going!’ They took off. Mich, J and I are jogging in good step, and then I spot the first hill. In between breaths, I say to Mich and J ‘go ahead, I’ll be good’. Mich challenged me for a bit saying she’s doing this WITH me, then I put my ‘mom voice’ on and off she went. On this route there were probably 6 hills! Nuts! What’s with that? Anyway, I read on the notices that there would be water stations at the midway point. I swore up and down that because of the rain the water station was cancelled because there’s NO WAY I couldn’t already be at the midway point. Close to 10 minutes later…water station was spotted. You’ve GOT to be kidding me.

Sigh. Well there’s no turning back now…streets are closed, it’s not like I can even hop in a cab or anything. I’ve just got to finish this race. Jog, walk, jog, walk, ru….n, jog, walk, jog, walk. At one point, I whip out my phone to use Google Maps to see just how much longer I need to run in the rain. 26 mins. Bigger sigh. Jog, walk, jog, walk, ru….n, jog, walk, jog, walk. I tell myself, once you make it in 1 hour, you’ve done it. I would be proud of myself if I did it in 1 hour. Then I spot Mich running back. Wow…my heart skipped 10000000 beats. Something MUST be wrong. But no…she finished the race and came back for me. Are you serious? You’re a crazy woman I thought. You ran, finished and decided to run some more? What is the matter with you? I cried a bit which totally passed off as rain drops on my face. I asked her how the kids did. She said D did it in 26 mins, Sai did it in 29 mins and she and J did it in 40 mins.

As she’s talking, she’s running faster and I can’t hear her, so I’m running faster. Then I stopped…I could not run, jog anymore. I could barely walk! Mich says to me ‘Trish…you’re almost there. If you really, REALLY run you can do it in 50 mins!’ What the what?! 50 mins?! That’s 10 mins sooner than I would have been ‘happy’ with. She takes off…I take off. As I round the bend, all I hear is ‘YAY…way to go’, Mich, Sai, D and J are cheering me, screaming at the top of their lungs. It’s like all I heard was them, there was nobody else but them and they were cheering for me! More tears (ahem…I mean more rain drops), I look at my time 51 mins, 26 secs.

51:26 will forever be embedded in my memory. By the time I crossed the finish line, the race rope that people run through at the end was long gone…but rope or not, it was the FIRST literal finish line that I ever crossed and it felt great. More tears…
Sai says to me ‘Mom, I’m soooooooo proud of you; I cried when you crossed the finish line, you did great!’ I’m struggling to hold back tears…all I could think was I wish I could have been there to cheer him on as he crossed the finish line. The tagline for the RBC run was ‘Every challenge deserves a starting point’, nuff said…I know you get it ;).