Last week was the worst week of my life. I survived four hours in the funeral home for my father's viewing and Rosary Prayer Service, and the funeral service itself. I gave the eulogy at his funeral. I kept everything together. I had organized friends bringing food to the house for my family and the post-funeral gathering. I assisted my mother with forms and appointment after appointment to make sure that her affairs were in order.
I will admit... I was a little bit of a robot. A smiling, joking robot, but a robot nonetheless.
I had to be emotionally cut off in order to get through... I didn't have a choice. I also didn't have a choice with the way I spent my time last week. Mom needed me; I was there. 'Nuff said.
When my father passed I did have a choice to make. I was either going to give up the past three months of training for the Disney Half Marathon and dissolve into a blathering mess, or I was going to soldier on.
Dad would not have wanted me to give up. I know that.
So... I didn't.
Friday afternoon I picked up Linette in the Bigger Town next to My Small Town. She had gotten a ride into work that morning from a colleague so that we could drive out to Disney together. We had booked a room on Disney property so that we wouldn't have to worry about pre-race traffic the next morning.
Linette and I drove to the Wide World of Sports Complex first, where the RunDisney Expo was being held. We checked in for the race, picked up our goodie bags, and walked around the expo, looking at all the cool running gear available. I bought a fun t-shirt from Raw Threads proclaiming Half Marathon Rock Star, and prayed that the next morning, I would be. We looked at overpriced shoes, played Plinko to get Chiquita bananas, and bought 13.1 stickers for our cars. (Mine says, 13.1 because I'm only half crazy!) We briefly attended a Cigna shindig that Linette had been invited to, where we ate some good cheese, and we had the picture located at the top of this post taken, for free. I joked that this was part of our $150 entry fee, and folks around me chuckled.
During all of the excitement I missed the sweetest international phone call from GDA, but the upside is that I now have a sappy one minute voicemail that I can listen to at will. And I do... at least twice a day. Sigh. (And yeah, we are now about 37 hours from his arrival time in Miami. I can't wait.)
After the expo, Linette and I drove to Panera to grab a bit of dinner, our last big fuel before the race, and then we checked into our hotel room. We went about pre-staging all of our gear for the next morning, because we needed to be on the bus by 3:30.
Yes... 3:30 a.m.
The cutoff for entering our corral was 5 a.m. At least, that's what the rules stated, and we didn't want to take any chances.
By nine we were in bed attempting to wind down, but we were so far from relaxed! We were excited, nervous, and full of anticipation for the next day's events. I think I finally fell asleep around 10:30, and slept fairly restlessly, waking up for good at 2:45, even though the alarm was set for 3:15. Waking up early enabled me to write a quick message to GDA. Linette was awake too. The day had finally come!
At 3:15 we sprung out of bed and put our running clothes on, packed the car, and drove to the main bus pickup, which had just arrived. Once on the bus, we chatted with our fellow potential half-marathoners. I ate my banana and drank some water. I couldn't believe what I had worked so hard for was actually happening.
We were going to run 13.1 miles, with 27,000 other half-crazed weekend warriors.
Addendum: The author has divided this post into two parts in order to allow the reader a bit of time to breathe before diving into the tale of the race of her life.
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