the race

Time of my life.

Betcha got that song in your head now, don't ya? I totally tried to leap into my sisters arms to reinact this, but she was all like, "I'm just a walker, not a weightlifter", and I was all like, "Whatever." Most of you know that I went on the Portland To Coast Relay walk with two of my sisters, and a bunch of other sisters.(Twelve women in all) I will tell you honestly, I had a total BLAST! I never say "I had a blast" about anything. But, I didn't just have a blast, I had a TOTAL BLAST! I had my first train ride ever with my sister. We had so much fun. I'm sure people thought we had been sipping the sauce, but really, we were just sleep deprived. We went in every car trying to find a seat, and finally settled on 2 together. Well, kind of together. One seat was about a foot behind the other...

We got into Portland about 9:30, and got to our fabulous host's house around 10:15. We stayed up meeting eachother, and putting our fantastic iron on transfers onto our t-shirts (That I made. Okay, My brother picked the font, but I did everything else. ) Anyhoo, we didn't get to sleep until about 12:30 a.m., and half of the team (the one I was on), had to wake up at 3:30 a.m. Our first walker took off at 4:30, and we hopped in the van, and followed along, dropping off and picking up walkers every hour. Not a lot of sleep, needless to say. I was the chubby (chubby is the nice word) girl on the team, and I did my first leg of the relay (3.3 miles) with my sisters. They didn't have to walk with me. One had just walked 5.5 miles walking a 13 minute mile, and the other was preparing for her 5 miler in a couple hours, but they decided they were going to walk with me. It was so much fun. I was walking as fast as I could, and they kept saying "I think this is a 16 minute mile! Way to go!" so I was really excited for my BIL to average my pace. Sadly, it turned out to be 19 minutes a mile. *sigh* Needless to say, although my next leg was in 15 hours, I started to worry. It was 4.3 miles and uphill the whole way. Fifteen hours is a long time to freak out. Needless to say, I started out, along with my very tall brother in law. It's actually nice to walk in the middle of the night because you can't see where the big hills are. Finally, I saw a marker that said "1/4 mile" and I said outloud..."That's only 1 lap around the track!!" and I started walking faster. I got to the end, and handed off my slap bracelet to the next walker, and promptly had an asthma attack. I grabbed my inhaler, breathed it in a couple times, and felt much better. Then I started to cry, then laugh, then cry, then laugh, while the others in the van sat, mouths gaping. They didn't know if they should call the doctor, or the looney bin. My sister said, "Oh, I've seen this before. She's just sleep deprived." 'Twas true. Anyhoo...I could see my brother in law figuring my pace, and I said "I don't even want to know." I told everyone I was going to go twice as slow because it was uphill. He finally said, "You might want to know. You went faster!" Hello! I did a 17 minute mile on the uphill leg! What's that all about?? Not as fast as my sister's 12 minute miles, but oh well. I just started walking a month ago. They've been walking for years. Sadly, I have more pictures, but it won't let me post them for some reason. We had such fun, and I haven't laughed like that in a long time. It was funny, after my asthma attack, I had this weezy laugh. Sorta sounded like Muttley the dog, from the "Laff a Lympics"