Hooked on Hardware

Last year I walked the Rock 'n Roll Las Vegas 5k and got an awesome medal at the finish line.  Right after I got an e-mail about the Inaugural Rock 'n Roll Arizona 5k and my friend and I decided to sign up.  I decided that I was actually going to "train" for the AZ 5k.  Needless to say that didn't happen.  Didn't step on a treadmill ONCE.  Not even a walk around the block.

So why am I contemplating signing up for next year's race?  Why am I going to sign up for the Vegas race in November and WHY am I even entertaining the thought of joining my best friend in the Walt Disney World Dopey Challenge in our 40th birthday year?  For that one you do a 5k on Thursday, a 10k on Friday, a 1/2 marathon on Saturday and a full marathon on Sunday...no wonder they call it the Dopey Challenge.  You have to be hella dopey to put yourself through that!!  So once again, WHY am I even entertaining these thoughts???  Yep, it's the hardware.  The medals.  The medals you get are AWESOME. 

This year with all of the drama at the ports in California, there was a very real chance that we wouldn't get our medals at the finish line this year and they would have to be mailed to us.  At first I figured not a really big deal, but when I saw 5k finishers walking back with their finisher medals around their necks, I was so thrilled.  It was exciting to know that I would get instant gratification for the 55 minutes I'd just put in walking around Tempe Beach Park.  They really are pretty awesome.  For this reason, I think I'm becoming a medal junkie.  Along with that means becoming an *gulp* "athlete".  That's the scariest part for me.  I've never been athletic...nothing even close to it.  To do a 5k I just need to walk.  To do a 10k I just need to walk.  I had a friend do both the 5k and 10k this past weekend and she got 3 medals for her trouble...they're awesome too.  To do a half or a full marathon, I have to become a runner.  A full fledged, no bullshit runner.  To tell you the truth, I'm scared and don't know if I'm capable of it.  I hide behind my asthma because I don't know how to push past it.

If I want the hardware though, I gotta push past the asthma...push past the fear.  Right now I'm in the lead in our household...I have two medals to my husband's one.  I'd never thought of it as a competition until he pointed that little factoid to me...and it felt good.  Time to lace up the old Nikes I guess...what am I getting myself into?!?