Here’s an idea. Let’s run a race. In fact, let’s run 5 races. And let’s have them add up to 26.2 miles.
And here’s the kicker: let’s not train.
Every fiber of running experience in my body—from the calluses permanently attached to my pinky toes to the hip that aches every single morning—tell me it’s a bad idea. I’ve run three marathons in my life and a good number of half-marathons, so I’m acutely familiar with the pain of pounding out miles. But I have no idea what that pain will be like without training.
So, yeah, let’s do this thing.
The Critz Tybee Run Fest is a two-day, 5-event race that includes a 5k, 10k, half-marathon, 2.8 beach run and a 1-miler that all equates to a marathon distance. Only a couple hundred people do all five. I do the half nearly every year, but I’ve secretly coveted the red race bib that screams “bad ass.” Two years ago, having just crossed the half-marathon finish and scoring a PR—the salt still stuck in my crow’s feet—someone in a red bib asked, “Are you only doing one of the races?” Like I was a bully who showed up showered and rested only to steal the race from the weakened and war-torn who had already logged 9.3 miles at the start.
Here’s a tip. Never utter the word “only” to a half-marathoner. It’s a veiled challenge. It’s also how I slid down that slippery slope from a 5k racer to a marathoner to someone who shows up for a race series without properly training. Turns out “ bad ass ” and “bad idea” are really closely related.
My only hope for the series is to survive. Without the pressures of expectations, I do something I haven’t one in a long time: I have fun. You know, that thing that groups of running friends do when they travel to races together and run in tutus. I have that—minus the tutus.
Tybee Island is about 10 minutes from my front door, but when my running partner hooks me and another friend up with a place to stay on the island, I jump at the chance. In all my years living in Savannah, I’ve never taken the opportunity to stay on the island. This weekend provides the perfect excuse, and staying in one of our vacation rentals on Tybee island sounds like the perfect way to do so.
After the Friday night 5k, my groomed girlfriends (who had opted out of the 5k) and I (still in my running clothes, stinky and proudly bearing the red bib) decide to grab a late bite at Tybee Island Social Club, the funky, laidback locale where everything goes—from suits and seersucker to cut-offs and, thank goodness, running shorts.
We all have an early wake-up for the 10k, but here on Tybee laughing with girlfriends about running and life over fish tacos and too many glasses of pinot noir—the race begins to matter less and less. It is why we’re here—but at the same time, it kind of isn’t.
We are here because we live in this incredible city that’s just 12 miles from the beach. Because we have more festivals than you can find beads for. Because we’re a group of friends that genuinely likes to spend time together, just rarely get the chance. So this weekend we take the chance.
You learn things about your friends when you spend 24-hours together. You learn that one has to go to bed at 8 or turns into a pumpkin (not me) and another has to soak in a bath with a glass of wine and a book (also not me, but God I wish) and yet another has a…blankie (that might be me).
And nothing quite says “love me for who I am” than a 5:30 a.m. almost-40 face smeared with mascara and framed by troll hair. And yet, there my girlfriends are, loving me for who I am—not who I spend the other 20 hours of the day pretending to be. Or, at least they aren’t averting their eyes.
I survive the race—all five legs. But what I will remember most is my one-night getaway with my girlfriends, cheering one another along, and seeing this place I live and these friends I love with fresh eyes. As we pull out of the driveway we agree that next year we’re adding another night to properly celebrate our achievement—and each other.