races embrace the metric system

I feel like I must explain why I am on this at 11 p.m. on a Friday night, probably more for my ego than for your actual interest, but the reason is health-related so I can claim to not be that vain.

Tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. I'm running a 5K (3.1 miles) with my friend Kelsey. The race is called Run Shadyside, and it's a run/walk through my neighborhood to benefit the Boys and Girls Club, so, you know, good causes and all that junk.

But it's way more than that to me, seeing as it is the first race I've ran in 5 years, since I left cross country in a disillusioned huff. My last memories of races (which were all also 5Ks) are of severe disappointments, crawling into the benches on the empty bus while the rest of the team stood outside and chatted in all their sweaty glory, so I could be alone to hate myself and accept that I'd never be able to run it in 21 minutes like the top girls on the team. The best I ever did was 25, at the district championships my freshman year.

Which, looking back, was fine, great, an achievement for the little fat girl who used to make up excuses not to play kickball in gym class. But I let the pressures of the running world, and my self-imposed definition of what a "runner" was, get under my skin and convince me that I was one of those girls on the team that spectators saw and poofed their lips and cocked their heads at. A charity case.

I don't blame myself entirely for this mentality though. The (slightly ridiculous) competitive nature of high school sports chipped in its fair share. I got to the point of: Why compete if I can't be as good as I want to be?

Of course, this race will be a lot different than those distant memories. There's nothing at stake here, time-wise. Thirty fewer seconds is not going to mean the difference of my team advancing, etc. No one on the sidelines screaming at me to pick it up.

And I'll have Kelsey, my friend who's running it with me, by my side cheering me on. She never did cross-country, but she did play soccer and ran track (and was good at both, from what I hear.) After a substantially more sedentary freshman year at college, she began running during the summer to get back in shape. Last spring, less than a year later, she ran the half-marathon in Cleveland, and last weekend she ran the Great Race in Pittsburgh. So, although she's not as fast as some of the girls I remember from cross country, she's still faster than me. But she's running this shorter race for me, not to beat me, but to encourage me, which is so, so great in a lot of ways that she may not totally understand.

I'm trying not to set any goals for myself besides to finish it, and run the whole thing, which I know I can do. I want to do this to feel good and to show myself that races don't have to mean torment, that no matter the outcome I've still achieved something awesome. I want to face an irrational fear and roadblock and take one giant step over it toward a positive image of myself and my body.

Plus, there's free pancakes afterward. I think I deserve to indulge in one or two.