First post!

Well, my family has decided we should have a blog. (Why not, everyone else does!) Our goal here is to share our adventures/lifestyle/quest for self-improvments with who/whomever finds them interesting. (A few friends and our parents is what we figure.)

Introductions, I'm T.J., my engaged-to-be-engaged girlfriend is Meghan, and our 7 year old is Madison. (Maddie, Munchkin, the nugget) We have a dog and two cats; Lady, Jaws, and Barnabas, collectively referred to as 'the Critters', and we will all be posting here from time to time.  (Well, perhaps not the Critters, but you never know.  They seem to be a smart bunch.) We live in a suburb of Los Angeles, drive a Prius and a Ford pick-up, and if the God's smile upon us, I'll get my 1978 Corvette running one day.

While we have already had some pretty excellent adventures, we are going to start with our current quest; running. Now, Meghan has been running for a while, I, on the other hand, have not run since Navy boot camp, circa 1980. (You do the math, yeah, I'm old.  Our neighbor calls me sir, kind of freaks me out.) My mantra has always been 'I'll run if something is chasing me.' Well, Meghan did a Disney 10K last August, and really enjoyed herself. So she signed up for another, the 'Tinkerbell 10K', to be run on January 18th. As she was signing up, she asked if I'd like to do it. Figuring I'd be able to; a. fake an injury, b. forget about it, or c. (last resort) train a bit and do the thing, I agreed.

 Oh, I trained. Went out and bought new running shoes the first week of September.

As it is wont to do, time made a fool of me, and suddenly it was race weekend. I was in perfect health. Neither of us had forgotten. I had to do it.

Our names were on the bibs, I'm pretty sure that's the point of no return.

Giving the University of Arizona some love!

At 4am the alarm went off. Because this is a Disney event, they had to finish before the park opened, so, a 6am start time. Meghan had picked up the race bibs the day before, so there I was, wearing dayglow yellow with a number pinned to my chest. (And my unused, brand new running shoes. They still had that new shoe smell.) Well, I looked like a runner, anyway.

 We piled into the rockin' Prius, and drove down to Disneyland, she graciously allowing me a brief nap on the way. I agreed to drive back. We parked, and headed to the start line, by my calculations about 10 kilometers away from the car. My protestations that we had already done 10k notwithstanding, we were herded into our starting corral, marked D. For, Dummies who agreed to do this. No, that's not true. D was where they put everyone who might not finish, but possibly would Die on the course. For a little perspective, the elite runners, i.e, those who are as fast as the wind, are Navy seals, or from Kenya, started in corral A. It should be noted that the first place runner (who, needless to say, started in corral A), was finished at almost the exact time the last person in corral D started. And no, that was not me, I do have SOME pride.

The hoard in corral D

There was a stage with an emcee shouting words of encouragement, and Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and others cheering us on. (And Tinkerbell of course, it was HER race, after all!)

We're off!

The first part of the course wound through Disneyland, including some backstage areas that normally lurk behind those 'EMPLOYEES ONLY' gates. Other characters, janitors, stable-boys and official looking Disney-folk waved and high fived us as we jogged on. "Hmmm" I thought to myself. "This is pretty cool."

The crowd at the rear was so thick that I could get away with quite a bit of walking at this point, and, if I'm honest, I indulged in that luxury several times. Runners would line up to take photos with Chip and Dale, Mary Poppins and Burt, and a couple of ghouls from the Haunted Mansion. They clearly were not too concerned with their finish times.




Leaving Disneyland and jolting away into California Adventure, I began to realize that some training, (other than the shoes), might have been a good idea. I wasn't in pain, exactly, just.... exhausted. spent. dog tired. And we were half-way there. "Should have faked that injury" I thought. I had slipped in the parking lot, would have been easy to claim a balky knee.

As we shuffled out of California Adventure, a new horror emerged. The pace girl! She was in front of us! We were behind pace! if we were not ahead of her by mile 5, we would be cut! No finishers medal! No banana! And they had Disney-folk on bicycles informing us of this!





Well, damn that. I did not get up at 4am to not finish and claim my banana and medal. I did not buy new shoes to bring up the rear!

Racing through the streets of Anaheim

(The astute reader will have noticed that there is very little mention of Meghan in this entry, rest assured, she was running along cheerily beside me the whole way, without a care in the world. I'm not sure she broke a sweat. Sorry, ladies, she didn't break a 'glow'. Women don't sweat, with the exception of Katharine Hepburn, apparently.)

I  grunted out through clenched teeth, "Let's pass her! She is evil! She is Malificent! She is between us and our bananas!" Or something to that effect.  (And for the record, I always wanted to grunt out words through clenched teeth.  Made me feel like Clint Eastwood.)

I managed to up my pace from a crawl to a shamble for a kilometer or so, enough to put the dreaded pace girl a few hundred meters behind us.

While all this was going on, the sun had come up on a beautiful Southern California day. Palm trees swaying, a gentle breeze, cheerleaders. Wait, cheerleaders?!? Yes, it seems one of the local high schools had their Cheerleaders on the route, waving pom-poms and doing other Cheerleader things as we dashed passed. Relatives of runners dotted the route, waving signs and generally upping everyones motivation. Suddenly, up ahead, I noticed a sign. 6 miles. Wait, 6 miles? Isn't a 10K 6.2 miles?!? "C'mon, honey, let's finish this thing!" And we took off in a glorious, mad sprint to the finish line. Medals! Water! Bananas! (She even let me cross first, a nice stroke to my male ego.)

My gaudy bling.

Strolling around the cool down area, sporting my giant gold finishers medal, and then into the Disney Health and Fitness Expo, I had an epiphany. Well, two epiphanies.  I was not in as bad shape as I had thought, and we had a wonderful time!

We rewarded ourselves with an indulgent breakfast at Carrows, (yes, still wearing our finishers medals), and I drove home.

Now THIS is a breakfast of champions. Or a breakfast of finisher #6049!

I could feel a few aches starting, but they would subside in a day or two. We stumbled in the door, peeling off running gear as we headed for the showers. My shoes no longer had that new shoe smell.

We were tired. We needed a nap. But we felt great!

I have to say, I'm hooked. It was a great weekend, a fun run in every sense of the word. We have started actually training, so we can finish the next one respectably.

So, who's up for a triathlon?

http://catalinaislandtriathlon.com/