Thunder and Lightning Strike Last‏

So this past weekend, I went upstate to celebrate Father’s Day and run the Summer Sizzle with my dad. As you know, I’ve been training for the Boilermaker – which is 9.3 miles – so a nice little five mile run three weeks before the main event seemed like a great idea.

The Summer Sizzle has prizes for family teams – mother/son, mother/daughter, husband/wife, etc., so my dad and I registered as a father/daughter team. Team name? Thunder (my dad) and Lightning (me). Oh yeah, baby! And the team name is especially great because most other teams have names like “Team Smith.” Suck on that, bitches!

Women and men run separate in this race, with women starting at 8:00 AM and men starting at 9:00 AM. I’ve been training for a while and was hoping to run this race in 65 minutes – a 13-minute mile. Respectable pace, nothing to be ashamed of, and great for me as I’ve only run outside a handful of times. So, that’s the goal.

Us, pre-race. So full of hope.

The women line up. I stay towards the back because I want my mom to get a good picture of me (what a blogger doesn’t do for her readers).

Check out my guns!

And then, I can’t catch up. I can see the last couple people, but most of the women are long gone.

You know what happens when you’re the last person in a race? It depends on the race. In some, you get followed by a police car, or an ambulance. In this race? You get followed by a person on a bike. For the entire five miles. A person on a bike right next to me. Sometimes going a little bit up ahead and circling back. Sometimes dropping behind me a bit. Sometimes putting on the brakes on the downhill to not get too far ahead of me. You know what that sounds like? “Squeak! Squeaakkkk! SQQQUUUEEEEAAAKKKK!”

You know what else happens when you’re last and being accompanied by the bicycle? With every traffic checkpoint you pass, you get to hear this exchange:

Cop directing traffic: This the last one?
Bike person: This is the last one.

So, there I am, running along, singing “Gimme Some Lovin” in my head to help me pace myself. And I’m dying to walk for a minute but feel all this pressure not to walk because PERSON ON A BIKE FIVE FEET AWAY!!!! And I periodically lose sight of all other runners, but it's cool because I've got a personal escort on a bike to give me directions - "you're going to turn left up here."

The course is actually kind of neat and takes you through a turnaround in the park about halfway through. As I come out of the turnaround (with my escort), approaching us are two fire/EMT guys on bikes.

Me: Are they here to make sure I'm not dead?
Bike person: They are always late.
EMT bike guy #1: Sorry we're late.
(No joke. That exchange actually happened.)

So, to recap, I'm just about to start my last two miles and I now have THREE PEOPLE ON BIKES FOLLOWING ME. They are very encouraging the entire time - "you're doing great," "I couldn't do this that's why I'm on a bike." But now I'm to the part of the run where I'm a little emotional. It's my first race over 5K. I know I'm last. I'm telling myself that it's okay to be last, no big deal, that the important part is that I'm feeling good and that I'm doing it. And I've got my entourage telling me I'm doing good. And I've got all the checkpoint traffic folks telling me I'm doing good. But the adrenaline is pumping and I'm getting emotional. And I'm trying really hard not to cry, which just makes me feel like I'm about to hyperventilate. It's a vicious, vicious circle. But no way in HELL am I going to let myself cry, because THERE ARE THREE PEOPLE ON BIKES and then it will be a "production." So, I slow down my pace for a couple minutes to try and catch my breath and then just keep on keeping on.

At this point, I'm in the last mile. And I figure I'm probably looking at a 75 minute run rather than a 65 minute run. But then I hear a clock tower signaling 9:00 AM and I think that maybe I'm not as far behind as I thought. And I know they are getting ready to start the men's race. My bike escort (the original) tells me to stay to the right because the race starts/ends on the same stretch of road and she doesn't want me to get plowed by all the men. So I'm in the home stretch.

Hey, Mom! Check out my entourage!

And I'm running, waiting for the men to start running towards me. And then I realize, they are HOLDING UP THE MEN'S RACE UNTIL I FINISH. Are you effin kidding me??? I've got three people on bikes behind me and now 82 men (give or take) waiting for me to finish before I can start? Can this get any more humiliating?

Yeah - see the 82 men lined up, waiting?

Thankfully, the answer is no. The guy who's job it is to start the race asks the men to give me a round of applause as I finish. I turn the corner towards the finish line and finish in 1:02:47 - just over 2 minutes LESS than the time I was hoping to finish in. AND - a perfectly respectable time!

In the meantime, my dad has started the race so I go wait with my mom for him to finish.

Here comes Thunder!

And here he is in the home stretch!

Thunder came in at 56:42, making our combined father/daughter time 1:59:39 (if my math is correct).

Note that his official time is different than the clock time.
Pretty sure that is my fault.

The winning father/daughter team time? 1:12:15.

All in all, we were both pretty pleased with our times and with how we felt when we finished.

Even so, Team Humphrey better watch their backs next year, because Thunder and Lightning strike last...