Monday, May 03, 2004

My house-mates and I kicked butt in the Bloomsday race. I have to say I am especially proud of my roomies for stepping up to the plate on this one. In the month prior to the race, they initiated a running/training regime and all of use managed to run at least three consecutive miles before the 7.5 mile race. The road trip to Spokane was littered with rock and roll, pit stops, frisbee tossing, gymnastics, lake wading, shirtless driving and tortilla chips with sweet onion/peach salsa (thank you Chris!). We dined with my Coeur D'Alene gang, scoured Fred Meyer for sunglasses and little boys undershirts and carted about 50 pounds of food away from my gramma's house, including more corn chips and chocolate cake.

Race day began at 7 am, yikes. The day was beautiful, and after walking approximately half the race's distance from our car to the start, we milled/hopped around with the crowd. I managed to spot several people from Missoula and let them know I was from the same town. I swear, Missoula is the Kevin Bacon of cities. It's related to everyone and everything in some form or another. But I digress... We did the mandatory "hit the beach ball in the air" thing and even tossed about some flying tortillas.

The two Bloomsday veterans, Rena and I, and the Sarahs, running neophytes who have never plodded more than three consecutive miles, took off at approximately 9:04 am, in a straight line. Our shirts declared ourselves the BURNINATORS, themed after a popular internet cartoon of a dragon named Trogdor, who burns peasants and the countryside and, in our case, Bloomsday. I must say we were quite imposing in our matching shirts and received many comments from fellow Trogdor enthusiasts.

The entertainment during the race was exceptional. The Red Hot Mammas in their clown suits dancing to I Will Survive made my day. I collected Mardi Gras beads from a quasi country/rock band and high fived the vulture at the top of Dooms Day hill, while talking to a reporter from NBC. I was on TV, take that Gwenyth and Mel. The Burninators split up around mile three, despite our best efforts, and Saralita and I went on to run the entire race, no walking. We gave high fives to the on-lookers, hooted and hollered for all the entertainment, yelled our battle cry at every mile marker, frolicked in the sprinklers and sprinted the last block of the race, finishing in under 90 min.

We reunited after the race and made our way back to Rena's Gramma's house for showers and picnic sandwiches. The ride back was short, thanks to Rena's superb driving prowess, and crowed but lively, thanks to the Aaron's company. Our trip was quite a success and I am looking forward to burninating many more Bloomsday courses with my roomies and any others who may want to join us, hint, hint.

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