{Run, Lauren, Run}

So in the summer, I met some friends who have a running club. Apparently, that's how runners roll here...they all have clubs. (You know you live in a communal society when people can't even run races by themselves!) But it's been fun running races with these guys (unfortunately there are no girls besides me and Lauren...Spanish girls aren't really into exercising)! Our team is called "Cruzcampeones" and we have bright neon yellow jerseys as seen above. Cruzcampo is THE beer of Andalucia (Southern community of Spain) and ALL Andalucians are obsessed with it! So of course these guys wanted to name their team after it...literally their team name means "beer champions." And after every race, they celebrate by drinking Cruzcampo beer. It's actually funny because after every race I've run here, there is an infinite supply of beer awaiting me at the finish line but it's impossible to find bottled water! That's another way I know that I live in Spain.

So the first race I did with the group was a 7K (random I know), which is almost 4.5 miles. I really hadn't been running much lately, so I knew I would do badly. The whole day before and the day of the race I had been freaking out! Seriously, I looked at every running website on the internet to see what I should eat, drink, breathe, smell, touch, wear, speak, make, feel, assume, excrete, etc. Whatever I was supposed to do that would help me finish!

When we arrived at the race, my friend Enrique said, "Oh by the way, there are a lot of hills in this course." PERFECT! Now I definitely knew that I was destined for failure! Before the race began, I was looking around scouting out the competition and such and realized that there were mostly men (duh) and all the women were older like 40+. With a sigh of relief, I thought, "at least I'll finish before most of them...surely." The race began (late as is custom for Spain)...GOING UP A HILL! Who does that?!?!? Plan a race up a hill?! Stupid. So I took off, breezing past most of the middle-aged, older, and more out of shape participants. "I can do this," I told myself, "it won't be so bad." Well then my ipod stopped working about 3 minutes into the race. Crap. The first lap around the city wasn't difficult, especially since there were tons of people cheering us on and kids singing and high-fiving us. The hills were really small and not nearly as bad as I had imagined. Well, then came lap #2.

To my surprise, lap #2 was not the same as lap #1. After about half a mile, I looked up and there was a ginormous mountain in front of me! Seriously this thing had a 90 degree incline, and it went on forever. My legs were pushing harder than ever before. About halfway up, this old woman yelled to me and said, "Come this way. It's a short cut and you can cut through to the other side then go down." So great! I just laughed and said, "Thank you but I'm going to keep going up." I have to admit, I did stop to walk a bit, but after a few seconds feeling really lame and loserish, I started jogging again. At the top of the hill was a beautiful view but unfortunately I wasn't able to enjoy it so much because I still had to keep running and finish the race. By this time, I was definitely at the back of the pack, and I couldn't really tell how many people, if any, were still behind me.

Although I never looked back, I knew I was the last person. Nearing the finish line, me and an older man began to run together and talk. He was encouraging me to keep going, and I asked him if we were the last ones. He said yes, so I responded that we should finish it together. As we neared the finish line, I urged him to run faster with me so we could finish sooner. I took off sprinting, expecting him to be right beside me, but he stayed behind allowing me to finish second to last out of about 500 people!! What a disgrace, but I was glad to have finished and also actually pleased with my time as it wasn't so bad for me.

This was a great experience with new Spanish friends, and they were all so encouraging afterwards. Since this one, we've run a few more races with them, and I've definitely improved a lot since the first one. In the fall, I trained hard 7 weeks for a half marathon, but after a trip to Germany, I lost my rhythm and motivation. So I'll be starting up my training again this week to hopefully complete the half marathon in February.