Nakita Grinie

Proof that Im still competitive

...when we ran our 1/2 marathon we both said, "We couldn't care less about our time, we just want to finish." And we did, with a 2:10:30 time---not fabulous but not the worst, either.

This time we said, "We couldn't care less about our time, we just don't want to die." We'd mentioned the 4:30:00 cut off as a respectable time, but we decided we didn't really care. And I firmly believed that statement until just now.

I was reading through some running blogs and stumbled upon this fact, which hit me like a ton of bricks.

Oprah Winfrey ran her first and only marathon back in 1997 in 4:29:20. Dude, I really want to beat Oprah. My inner competitive athlete just emerged while sitting at this computer and I thought, "If freaking Oprah can run sub 4:30 then so can we."

And just like that I've decided that I care about our time. So now it's out here on the blogosphere, which means it's really going to suck if we post a 5:00:00 marathon or something....but whatever. Right now I want to beat Oprah and come in under 4:20:00. That would be exactly 10 minute miles, which is our average, but it won't allow for any walking/puking/dying/crying time.

But when I'm near death and my legs are burning, I will just picture rich Oprah [who I happen to love, by the way] sitting on her talk show couch and bragging that she ran a 4:29 marathon. Because if I'll never meet the legend in real life, at least I can beat her in a marathon, right?

Does that make me psycho or just competitive? It's not like I care about beating any 'real' people, or friends, or other bloggers [I'm sure they'd all whip my 4:20:00 goal anyway]. Just Oprah.

And I still don't want to die, either. I hope that's not too much to ask.