Untrained, Unplanned, Delusional

This will teach me to drink and agree to things, I think to myself as I walk around the REI in Clackamas Town Center in stiff turquoise sneakers. I have agreed to participate in a relay walk marathon. I actually agreed to this months ago, over drinks with my friend Courtney. I wish I could say we were both drunk but the truth is, the max was delayed and I pregamed at the White Eagle before meeting up with her. She suggested the marathon in earnest in the middle of her first drink, and since I’d plied myself with drinks on the way over, I have no one to blame but myself.

*I wear this to increase wind resistance*

Courtney was a runner in high school, so she’s done these kinds of things before. I haven’t. I’m active, and I figure, it’s walking. How hard could it be? I work in a restaurant, so I can walk consistently at a clip for hours on end. I bike to and from work regularly, I pole and swim and I generally stay hydrated. I don’t know if this is truly delusional of me, but I haven’t trained a single day for this. I’ll let you know how much I end up regretting it.

In fact, I regretted saying yes to this almost immediately. I know I don’t want to sleep in a van. I know I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of strangers eating protein bars, but I’m in too deep now. I should have thought of a reason not to do this months ago, before I was sent a hundred emails about it. And now, I find out that our first leg starts at 3:45 in the morning, which means being at the meeting in the Woodland High School parking lot at 230. In the morning. Our first 5-mile leg is easy, our second, harder. For our 3rd leg, Courtney and I have been randomly assigned the hardest leg of the race. 6 miles uphill at the coast, just after midnight.

Even though there is no reason we were selected to do this besides, I assume, luck of the rotation, it feels like some kind of responsibility. Suddenly, somehow, it occurs to me: What if this was fun? What if I thought of this as a fun thing I got to do? I did actually volunteer for it, like everyone else did. Suddenly it sounds fun in that way you look forward to doing things you know are going to suck. And that giddy anticipation is the kind of excitement which only delusion can provide. I know once I’m finished I’ll be saying things like, boy I wish I’d known not to shit my pants or whatever insight wouldn’t have occurred to me before.

In the movie version, I reluctantly join my friend and in our quest to figure out our lives, we learn instead to accept what comes. Two 40-year-old women go on a hike is the longline, but the subtext is that we’ve gone on a much larger journey. Get it? What if this was our “Wild”? Our “City Slickers”? To a lesser extent, our “Happiness for Beginners”? Our “Eat, Pray, Love” which I haven’t seen but I’m pretty sure something like this happens in it?

*Me explaining to everyone I know how walking that one time changed me*

Anyway it might be fun. It will definitely suck but if I think of this as something that is fun because it sucks, I think I can get something out of it. I wonder if there will be time to draw comics in the van.