Race Recap - "An Impressive Athletic Feat"

When writing down little goals for 2018, one of mine was to accomplish "an impressive athletic feat."

For some people, that might be a marathon or climbing a mountain or biking a couple hundred miles or something of that sort.

At the time I wrote that goal, I had just gotten steroid shots and had been ordered to stay off my feet as much as possible to avoid early labor. And even in the best case scenario, I'm not the most impressively athletic type...so my standards were not exactly high.

This weekend, I accomplished that impressive athletic feat.

Which is...wait for it...complete an approximately 2.5-3 km fun run...while carrying a 20+ lb. baby for most of it.

The senior class at Angel's school had organized a charity fun run, a "Splash'n'Dash," which meant that it would involve water balloons and hoses and buckets and the like...and I decided that this was the right time to do something impressively athletic. I want to participate in the school's events when I can so that I don't feel like a total outsider at Angel's work, and this was a good opportunity. My two sisters decided to join--this would be Sarah's first race, ever! It was my second.

The not-so-athletic among us underestimated the difficulty that the race might entail. And by "us," I mean, "me." I carried the baby so that Angel could actually run the race while I took it at a much slower pace. The baby ended up being a very useful shield, as the people manning the hoses and buckets of ice water took it pretty easy on me as soon as they saw the infant in arms. The course involved flights of stairs and a climb up a bit of rocky trail in a part of the campus that goes into the jungle, so it was by no means a flat, easy run. I opted to wear Chacos instead of actual shoes and I'm glad I did, due to the mud involved.

I was very proud of both Sarah and MaryGrace for running and completing the middle school and high school races. I didn't really run at all, but some of the people manning the race track suggested that I ought to get a special prize for completing the race with the heaviest additional load. I felt like making some kind of joke about "These last 20 lbs of baby weight just seem to stick around." Clearly the everyday baby carrying has been a great upper body workout, because, honestly, the carrying part was not all that bad, although I was pretty tired when the race was over. Or maybe that was the 4 times Cyrus was up last night. Who knows? Whenever I'm on the school's campus I'm amazed by the beauty of it all--the school is right next to the ocean and I love the view out over the water.

Cyrus was only mildly amused by being sprayed with water--I had thought he would like it more, since he loves showers and swimming so much, but he was really chill, instead of being his exuberant self. Maybe this is because he had been happily napping when it was time to go to the race?! (He took a nap after the race and when he woke up he was not chill anymore, so all's well now).

So there, I guess that's my most amazing athletic feat of 2018. Unless it was having that baby in the first place?