The 5k and an update on our TEAM effort :)

My first race since having Parker is this coming Saturday, it's a 5k. 3.1 miles. The funny thing is that, for some reason, this distance continues to defeat me. No, seriously. It's not that I can't run 3.1 miles, I ran nine this past Sunday and five the Wednesday before that. I can't race it. I have raced two 10k's and two half marathons. I ran 14 miles every Saturday for several months before I got pregnant with Parker. Every 5k I have attempted has been a bust. The last one I attempted was especially bad though. The several that I had done before I wound up walking at some point (??)-frustrating, so the last one I signed up for was to be greatness. I had been running 8, 9, 10, 11 miles every Saturday building up to my first half. My shortest run during the week was four miles and I just knew I was going to kick this 5k to the curb. Well, it didn't happen that way. Aarik and I got to the race early, too early, and walked around for awhile, eventually sitting down to wait at the starting line. A little while before the race I decided I needed to pee and walked down to the port a potty's (ugh just typing the word makes me want to vomit), where we found probably a hundred people, if not more, waiting in line. Being the germ-a-phobe I am, and lacking the patience it would take to stand in a line that long, I decided "Hey, it's only three miles! I'll knock it out real quick then find a place to pee." Right. Let me give you some advice: it might "only be three miles" but you WILL NOT be knocking it out with a full bladder! Of course they started much later than the given start time, at which point I had been holding it for well over an hour. The gun went off and I took off, determined to get a great time and get to a toilet. That first half mile was amazing, it was the fastest I'd ever run, and then.... I peed myself. No, I'm not kidding. For real. In front of like 10,000 people. Who does that?!?! It brought me back to preschool days. Luckily it was very close to the one set of porta potty's on the course and I ducked into one and called my sister to pick me up on the closest street she could meet me at (moral of the story: ALWAYS run with your phone). Her, her boyfriend (now husband), and best friend left the finishing area, had a cop stop traffic (AND the race) because they had a "family emergency" and picked me up somewhere downtown with wet shorts and dropped me off where we had parked to wait on my husband. Talk about humiliation. I'm sharing this because if I fail at a much longer distance it won't be nearly as humiliating as telling everyone that cares to read about it this failure, at this mileage. Also to make you laugh because it's pretty funny. I'm hoping this Saturday I will be able to run the whole time and not pee myself. I don't even care what my time is.Well, not that much anyway...

Now that I have your attention, I wanted to give you a little update on the fundraising effort! Callie's Grandma, Jennifer, and Uncle David are also going to be training for the marathon that I'm doing. We are excited to be doing the fundraising as a small team effort this year in hopes to make it bigger by next year. It has been wonderful to see the outpouring of love through donations so far and we are really hoping to meet exceed our goal by the day of the marathon. Remember you can click on the "Donate" link on the side of my blog or just click here.  You can also keep up with the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation and all that they are doing to fight SMA. My little mileage ticker girl is on her way and I'll try to keep her up to date too. I'll let you know how Saturday goes when I get a chance. Hopefully it will be an uneventful night. ;)  Any runners out there feel free to share any of your "funny" running stories too!