Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Reactions of the Nonrunner

So for those of you who run, do you ever have funny conversations about running with your nonrunner family/friends? Since completing my half mary, I've had a few.

Friend: So how did your race go?
Me: It went really well! I had so much fun!
Friend: So what was your time?
Me: 1:58
Friend: So...how far did you run then? Like, a mile? Half a mile?
Me: Ummmm, no. I ran 13 miles.
Friend: Wait a minute, I don't understand. What time did you start running and when did you finish?
Me: Well I started at 8 in the morning and I finished a little before 10.
Friend: (Pause) WHOA! That's like 2 hours! Did you walk some or did you run the whole time?
Me: I ran the whole time.
Friend: (LONG pause) Uhhh, wow. That's pretty crazy. I bet you'll be sore tomorrow! You'll probably have some blisters too.
Me: Well, I've been running like this for a couple of months now, so my body's pretty used to it.
Friend: No. You'll have blisters.
Me: Okay, I'll have blisters. (Time to change the subject...)

So then at work, My principal congratulated me and another coworker on completing the half mary this weekend (we ran the same one!) over the PA, so I had a lot of funny conversations with coworkers. While all of them were congratulatory and VERY nice, a lot of them basically just said that I was completely insane. "Why would you ever want to do that?!" "You're crazy, I don't even want to run 1 mile!" "13 miles? Was someone chasing you?!" Then of course there were my students:

Student: So, did you win your race?!
Me: Well, there were about 600 people there, so no, I didn't win the race, but that really wasn't my goal. I just wanted to do the best that I knew I could do.
Student: (With a joking smirk) That's okay Mrs. M. You just keep telling yourself that.

Kids, gotta love them!

All in all though, while I've had some pretty funny conversations with people lately about running, I am glad overall to be having any conversations about it! So much of the training that we do (at least for me anyway) is solitary. I rarely run with anyone and I don't really talk to many people about the training I do either. For one, I don't like to talk about myself a lot anyway and two, none of my family or friends run, so they could pretty much care less. This race has finally given me the opportunity to tell people, "Hey look what I did (and have been doing for the past 7 months!) I gotta admit -- it's pretty fun!

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