Crazy Legs

On Saturday morning, Christie, Trevor, and I drove out to Madison for the 8K Crazylegs Classic. It was an adventure. And even though the details on paper make it sound like a collection of misfortune, we had a great time. But I'm not sure if we'd do it again.

We began the day with some slightly stressful driving around the city as we realized that I had no idea where registration was. Go figure, I thought it would be somewhere near the starting line. Nope, about a mile away from the start. We made it to registration with about 15 minutes to spare. Luckily, we had 60 minutes between registration and the start.

The sun was out, and it looked to be a beautiful day for a run. We made our way to the capital, which was the starting point. No directing signage, so we ended up at the end of the last wave - of walkers. Even after our wave finally began running (35 minutes after the start of the race!), we had to get past all of the walkers and slow-poke runners. We started with about 20 runners behind us. That left about 14,980 in front of us. As Trevor pointed out, we spent the entire race passing people. Not one person passed us. (Except for when that girl dropped her phone and Christie accidentally kicked it while trying to pick it up.) We're not that fast. We were just placed at the back of the slow people.

Despite all of the people that we passed during the running, we apparently didn't get to the finish line early enough, because they RAN...OUT...OF...BEER! Come on! That's how I made it up the hill on Mile 2. I kept repeating, "beer (pant, pant) beer (pant pant) beer" on every step of my right foot. How can they run out? That's the most important part of the race - the rehydration. They don't run out of beer during the Beer Run of Riverwest, or of sausages during the Sausage Race of Miller Park. Unacceptable.

Well, with morale at a low (but not the lowest, that was yet to come), we made the long trek back to the car, which was at the registration area - nowhere near the finish line. Upon seeing the car I reached into my pocket for the car keys, and found out that they were no longer there. Perhaps I had given them back to Christie because it was her car? Nope. I dropped them. We did not panic, which greatly helped the situation. Sure, we were in a strange city, without any certainty of our exact location. Our cell phones - in the car. Our identification - in the car. Our money - in the car, except for a sweaty $15 in Trevor's shoe. We knew no phone numbers, nor anyone's address in the city. The best option was to take the walk back to the stadium and look for the keys. We were fortunate enough that it was still open though we had to ask the staff's permission to look around. Eventually, we went to the Lost and Found. And lo and behold, someone had turned in the keys! Yea! No call to a locksmith!

We went to a bar for a lunch of beer and burgers. I was introduced to Mac-n-cheese wedges. Who knew that one could deep-fry macaroni and cheese into a wedge shape? It was ok, but I'd prefer my mac-n-cheese in a spoon-friendly form.