For most people the idea of running 10.5km is scary, and I’ll admit these days it is far scarier than it used to be for me. There was a time where someone could come to me and say “hey we need a runner for our relay, you’d have to run 10km” and I would say “sure, where do I have to be”. Now, after ignoring all things athletic for some time, I am far more reluctant to enter into that sort of event with enthusiasm and self confidence. Regardless after little thought I agreed that running 10km would be a good idea and as some of you recall I began training for this event some time ago. Before we get to the outcome of said race I’d like to let you in on my final two weekends of training. Not because they show how dedicated to training I was, but because they show how much of an idiot I truly am.

With two weeks until race day I had made solid progress, pushing myself to approximately 8km without much effort. Oddly my breathing was never an issue during this process, but my legs had thus far not cooperated. Anyway it was my friend White’s birthday and with most of our Regina pals out of town and it being his 30th we decided a journey to the City of Champions was in order. Due to the length of the stories involved I am going to list the goings-on in point form. I’m sure that will be sufficient to paint a pretty picture in that head of yours.

• 9am golf involving a Ryder cup match between Team Saskatchewan and Team Alberta began a weekend that will echo in infamy for some time. While the loss by Team Saskatchewan cannot be solely blamed on alcohol I think it played a large part in our team’s downfall. I know for a fact the punishment for our loss was a major contributor to the end of the evening.
• After consuming many beverages over the course of the day, ramping up with beer darts and Beersbie of course made complete sense. The 70 some odd beers consumed in less than 2 hours (between 8 of us) were a testament to our greatness.
• The stunning female with the excellent pushup bra that laid eyes on Mr. White was an unfortunate near miss. Her heckling (aided by yours truly) of his choice of water for his first round of drinks was both stimulating and pertinent. As a duo I’m pretty sure her and I would have made many more brilliant jokes about his lack of manhood. Unfortunately White was not long for the bar on this night.
• The scar left by White’s sudden exit from the cab and dragging of his back against the van door’s locking pin will be a reminder of his 30th birthday for some time. Someday when he has kids he will be able to tell the story of what he did on his 30th birthday. As a side note I have only seen one other instance of puke of such volume. That distinction belongs to Mitch, but White may have surpassed that mark. The time between these two events makes it difficult for me to reconcile.
• Cab driver’s don’t always know where they are going. As much as I enjoyed watching White sleep with a giant rock as his pillow under a Sobey’s sign I would have preferred to have been taken home to a bed. Luckily it all worked out in the end, but disaster could have reared its ugly head.

• The day started slowly, mostly for White, but it would not progress slowly. After restarting our engines our night began with our best cab ride of the weekend. She was attractive, joined in with our dirty jokes, and knew how to get where we were going. That’s a 10 in terms of cab rides in my opinion.
• I was an asshole on this night. While I’m not the most fit or beautiful man in the world some people scare me with how far they have let themselves go. We met a stagette where the entire bridal party was over 400 pounds and visually they left a lot to be desired. Regardless I did sign the giant penis they had, but I proceeded to mock them by rocking my chair as they passed by simulating an earthquake and at one point asked if they had eaten our pub crawl bus as it had not arrived. These jokes were well received, but in retrospect may have been classless. Luckily class is not something I pride myself on.
• At one point our bus was compared to a rape bus as it was parked in an alley. I would like to thank Kathleen for her comment of “not again, my stitches haven’t healed from the last rape bus I was on”. Again class was not at the forefront on this night.
• Furthering my grip on asshole-dom I was tasked with removing some “Woo Girls” from our bus as they got onto it without our consent. They were youthful and would woo whenever anything remotely good happened. They would especially woo whenever we would mockingly woo from the back. My tactic was to begin singing the “Gangbang Song” at full volume with the back of the bus joining in where appropriate - at our next stop they got out and physically ran away.

Training wasn’t tops on my list the following week obviously as I needed some time to recover from an insane weekend. Upon recovering and with a week to go until the big race I decided it was a good weekend to go to the lake - for whatever reason I couldn’t pass it up and made the trek back to Alberta. Thankfully only to Wainwright, but it was still another weekend on the road. Again due to the length of the stories involved I will list them in point form.

• I was not particularly good at beer pong on this night. To the point where I don’t think I was on a winning team over the course of the evening. This lead to a quicker start than anticipated.
• Drinking heavily in a hot tub isn’t recommended and I realize that, but it happens every year out there. Did I smarten up this time around? Definitely not.

• Golfing on sand greens is always an experience, especially when the fairways are basically a farmer’s field. We created a drinking game where anyone who had a worse score than me playing left handed had to drink the difference. I’ll admit that I beat my right handed self a few times left handed. I also broke a right handed 7 iron somehow – you win some you lose some. At least it wasn’t my normal set of clubs. Craig also hit the drunk wall during the round and had to leave the course at one point. He made a miraculous recovery by the time we returned to the clubhouse though.
• I have to thank Craig for purchasing the fireworks display this year. Apparently it received rave reviews from the kids on the other side of the lake. Thankfully no hair was singed in the lighting of said fireworks. Although I do miss the days of Mitch and I proving we were unable to light fireworks without the unexpected happening.
• Beersbie is drastically improved with glow sticks. Heck life in general is improved with glow sticks. Although Beth’s obsession with them borders on an episode of Intervention waiting to happen. I’m not sure we could get those guys from the show to pop in and film it, but I have already begun working on my letter just in case.

• Since we had plowed through several liters of vodka, every flavor of Sourpuss thought to exist, Peach Schnapps, Amaretto, and anything that resembled alcohol Craig and I were tasked with heading into town to get alcohol. For some reason liquor stores in Wainwright don’t open until 11am, but being people that don’t sleep we were there far earlier. To speed our purchase I attempted to buy liquor from a hotel bar, but they were none too happy to see me. In fact before entering I told Craig if I wasn’t back in 20 minutes that he should head back out to the lake and begin my funeral arrangements. Thankfully I survived, but we had to kill an hour in the City of Wainwright and let me tell you that is difficult to do on a Sunday.
• Lemon Sourpuss and Citronella smell and likely taste eerily similar.
• Beer darts led Chris and I to believe that taping glow sticks to Frisbees and ourselves would make Frisbee golf possible at the sand green golf course. While we could see the Frisbee and each other, regular Frisbees do not fly very far in comparison to a golf ball. After 13 throws a hole for 6 holes our arms had had enough. I hope the first group to play in the morning enjoyed the Big Turk chocolate bars we left in each hole we played.

So after all that I had a measly 5 days to prepare for the big day. Exhaustion spelled Monday, and soreness spelled Tuesday. I basically went for a 3km run on Wednesday and an 8km run on Friday leaving myself still short of running 10.5km prior to the race. Thankfully our time wasn’t super important to anyone on our team so I wasn’t concerned. If I needed to walk I would walk.

Sunday arrived and I was feeling pretty good. I got up a bit early, had a small breakfast and headed to my starting location. Pretty much right on schedule Brett made his way to the handoff area. I made sure to be near the end of the handoff area to ensure he got his full distance in – I’m pretty sure he was wondering where the fuck I was for a moment. Off I went and to be honest I felt pretty good except for the fairly steep hills at the 4km and 6km mark. I employed my strategy of following attractive females in Lululemon pants and it really helped take my mind off the pain my legs were feeling. Although I soon realized the cream of the crop in the nice butt category were far faster than I was as they were actually in good shape.

Regardless I finished in just over an hour, which was pretty much what I was hoping for. All my training had paid off obviously, especially the part involving all the booze. As a team we finished 80th or so out of 150 some teams so we were pretty much the average, which considering we were worried about finishing in time was quite the accomplishment. You see kids? Dreams can come true.