5K

Sometimes I think my expectations are too high. But sometimes I believe that having high expectations yields better results. Like today. Call us crazy, but Andrew & I signed up our family to participate in a 5K run/walk. It was a benefit for the Brain Tumor Society. A friend of ours has a brain tumor. He’s an integral part of this race. And he put together a team. So we signed up. We didn’t think about how hard it would be from any angle. We just signed up.

Yesterday, we went to Hershey Park. What a blast! We went on roller coasters and walked and ate greasy fries and Nathan’s hot dogs and had a phenomenal time. And got home very late. We were tired and dirty and we all collapsed. My point is, that we didn’t think about the fact that the race started at 8:30 a.m. in downtown Washington, DC. Meaning we had to leave our house (with energy for the walk) by 7:00 a.m. What were we thinking?

I, for one, expected that that the boys would rally. That they would understand the importance of the promise to walk — that the sponsors we had expected us to give it our all. That the kids and the adults with brain tumors who pray for a cure expected us to give it our all. So it never occurred to me that we couldn’t do it.

Admittedly, it was a slow start. No one wanted to get up this morning. In the rain. But I got up and had my first cup of coffee. Andrew got up. And somehow, we got everyone in their team t-shirts and pinned their numbers on and we were off.

And we made it. We walked the 5 kilometers. We did have a few running blasts, but mostly we walked. We figure that we finished about 5,000th. To you, that doesn’t sound impressive, I’m sure. To me, it’s a miracle. If you had walked with Max, you’d know that by 2 km the odds were not looking good. But we made it. Just as I’d expected.