Saturday, July 9, 2011

Friends are friendly

There's a lot going on in my life right now, as evidenced by the clothes that have been hung to dry for days now, and my dishwasher that needs to be unloaded and my fridge that is resplendent with candied salmon, cottage cheese and individual juice boxes. I'm just riding it out. I said that I would do nothing next weekend and I've already got a dinner and a coffee lined up.

I'm not complaining. My friends are awesome and they seem to want to continue to see me. God knows why.

Today we get up around 9am and head over to Lynn Valley Park to check in for our marshalling duties for the Knee Knacker. This is a totally crazy 50k trail run that goes from Horseshoe Bay to Deep Cove and I knew a lot of people that were running it, but was mainly interested to see C who I missed during my 90 second pee break today. Awesome.

After 2.5 hours of directing traffic, giving parking advice and explaining over and over again what the race entailed to random people I got home and C came over after running a blistering 6:37 race. I couldn't believe it. I said he was welcome to nap before the banquet but no. He was moving fine and in good spirits and I just can't understand how one can get up at 3:30am in the morning and run the trails for 6.5 hours and move fluidly and talk cohesively. I was very impressed.

We went to the banquet. I didn't go the last time we volunteered (volunteers get a free ticket), but this time I felt that I had developed relationships with people enough that I could go and not feel alone. And it was great. I talked to so many runners from my clinic who had done the run and got the lowdown from them and I loved the sense of community.

From start to finish it was a such a positive experience. The weather was excellent. I was so excited to see so many people I knew at kilometre 35 of such an arduous race. Everyone was in good spirits at the dinner. The first female finisher of this particular race was at our table and was totally nonchalant about winning it. I love random stuff like that.

How these people got up at 3:30 this morning to start their 50k race at 6am and showed up with smiles and good spirits for the dinner tonight just amazes me.

Congrats to everyone that participated today, especially C who totally downplayed a very impressive time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you wear your bear mask this year? ;)

Duder said...

LOL, no. That was fun. This year I had to stop traffic for runners crossing a paved road. That was fun too. I love stopping traffic. I had a sign and a vest and everything. I had... authority.