I
found myself running another short mud obstacle course called the
Rugged Maniac at Thunderbird Raceway in Phoenix Arizona. I was in the
first group to go at 9:15am. I got ready to run and always like to be
upfront, close to the start line. I saw this girl jumping around looking
like she was warming up. But she had on old school canvas type high
tops, jeans and a long sleeve grey hoodie with lots of stuff written on
it. So I had to ask what the names were about. Her name was Hailey and
she told me they represented the names of soldiers that were off
fighting in Iraq. She was running for all of them. Some 40 or 50 of
them. She personally knew 4 of them but some how it got around that she
was doing this and the list grew. I have to give her props knowing she
took the time to write each and every name. Then it became clear she
was moving around because she was very nervous. Thinking she would not
be able to do it. So me being me I tried to calm her down a bit and give
her some words of encouragement. To just take it at an easy pace and
enjoy it. This is all for fun and to benefit a good cause and now for
all the names she had. Well the race started and I tore it up like I
usually do. I still had some energy left so I decided to go back and
find Hailey. I found her about half way back. I figured she was rolling
with the weight of all these names the least I could do was keep her
company the rest of the way. She was freaking out pretty good. She does not run so this 3
mile was working her over. And she was freezing from the water. So I
talked to her throughout the rest of the run. We ran when she could and slowed it down for a walk when she had to breathe a bit. I was also helping her get over some tricky obstacles. Mostly through words of encouragement and or tips on how to orient herself to make the best assault on the obstacle. We made it through. She was
very happy to have finished. I gave her a high five and told her she did
an AMAZING job and did every single name on her shirt proud. Even got the photo guy
to take some shots of her for her facebook page. She plans on doing
more runs like this for the soldiers so I am sure I will run into her
again. My good deed for the day. Felt GREAT about it. Of course after that I ran back, yet again, about half way to find the huge water slide I thought was fun. I ended up going down it 21 times. I would run back up and go again and again. Each time trying to do something different or silly on the way down. I would have done more but the material on the slide was starting to burn through and I knew I would be having marks and pain later. I had a good size group of spectators watching and laughing and enjoying my play time. Always making people laugh. This is no surprise to anyone that knows me. And I even got a few people to join in with me. But no where as many times as I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment