Running

Has anyone seen Spanglish? It's one of my favorite movies. I even tolerated Adam Sandler in it.

The reason I ask is because Téa Leone played an excellent type A mother who is a health freak and overly concerned about weight and apearance, among other things. In the movie, she redefines "avid runner". She's more like a running fiend. In one scene, there is a group of men running uphill. Téa's character sees a challenge. She shouts at them that she's passing them. The men pick up the pace and look back, concerned, as they see her gaining on then. Remarkably, she does pass them.

My sister is a runner as well. She is trying to drop the last remnants of pregnancy weight so she can fit in her size 6 body again. I've never been a size 6, so I wouldn't know the agony of being a size 10. Poor thing. *wink*

But I digress. She recently joined a group of neighborhood women who like to run. They invited her to join them during their 5:45am workout. When she arrived they told her that they walk a minute, run 6 minutes and then take a one minute break. To make sure they keep exact time, these women had digital watches that were SYNCHRONIZED and beeped every one minute and six minute increments. That should have been the first clue to my sister that she was in for it. In truth, she confessed that she thought they were wimps for only running six minute stretches.

Turns out that two of the women were training for a triathalon. The other two were only training for a marathon. And the loop they were scheduled to run was 5 miles. My sister said she began to run with them and quickly discovered that these women didn't just run... they galloped like horses. She longed for the one minute break they took. While most people would tell my sister that she should've told them to run ahead of her, keep in mind that it was the pre-dawn hours. Running in a forest like setting in the dark isn't the safest place to go for a jaunt. My sister was running for her life.

At one point after a one minute break, she cried "Dear God!" Coming from a highly religious family that did NOT take the Lord's name lightly, I stress that my sister was not using God's name in vain. But it wasn't a prayer either. It was more of a desperate plea to the Almighty for relief. My sister was praying for the second coming of Jesus, the rapture... anything that would relieve her burning lungs and spaghetti legs.

To hear my sister tell this story in person is priceless. I was on the floor gasping for breath, it was that hilarious. Call it a hunch, but I suspect that if my sister would tell HERSELF her own stories, she would laugh her way into her size 6 Levi's in no time.