Five Kay

On Saturday, I did a very noble thing. I did a 5k for the Let It Be Foundation- a foundation that supports local families with children with life threatening illnesses. I went with three awesome and hilarious women: Camille Knecht, Katie Knecht, and Rachel Knecht. It’s fun already, right? I know. A bonus was the promised pancake breakfast at the end. We stumbled to Chino Hills High School around 7:15 am all smiles. After I cut in front of a couple guys to get my shirt, we lined up for the kick off, or send off….whatever-the start. But of course we had to have opening ceremonies where the children of the benefit stood in front of us. They played John Lennon’s “Let it Be” in remembrance of the children lost. Ummm…not a dry eye in the group. Next thing we knew, there’s a peppy blonde up on stage in full Jane Fonda gear (actually I couldn’t see her, but I’d bet she was) screaming into her headset that we should stretch. I kinda leaned to the side, raised my arms in the air, stomped the ground, and clapped my hands a few times. I imagine I rather looked like I was getting to sumo wrestle. Then- Bam!! The race was on! No it wasn’t. We weren’t even timed. So the Knechts and I kicked it into gear and off we went. The first 1k was easy peasy and I thought it was hilarious that we were actually crossing streets. Cars were lined up waiting for 400 people to frogger their way through intersections. It was a bad day to be driving in Chino Hills. My apologies if you were one of those cars. In between 1k and 2k was a decision. If you went left, it was an easier, less strenuous course. If you went right-you had a challenge. The Knechts and I, being raised to always CHOOSE THE RIGHT, went for the hardcore course. We meandered along a rocky path alongside beautiful golf course. How nice! I was still smiling at this point. All the sudden, the ground dropped out from under us and we found our “strenuous course”. We started baby-stepping/ sliding down a 40 foot drop straight down. When we got to the bottom of that, we had to climb a 40 foot hill straight back up. And this continued about 5 more times. What were we thinking? We should have gone left with the strollers! Of course they’d keep the babies safe, while we were trying not to Jack and Jill ourselves on loose gravel and dog poop. But we are totally awesome and made it out unscathed. Well, unscathed at the time-my calves have subsequently had 37 strokes since then. The next 2k’s were winding through the streets in Chino Hills, and we entertained ourselves by bursting into spontaneous song of “Let it be, let it be! Whisper words of wisdom, let it be!” Okay well actually just Camille did that. We hit a point where we curved along beside some houses and through a field of some sorts. As we entered the field, we passed a sign that said something along the lines of “Beware: there are wild animals in here that are not afraid to eat you”. Oh happy day! We did not encounter anything wild; however I did spy suspicious rustling in the bushes. I wasn’t afraid because I had Katie and Rachel with me, who I hear, have started using actual wooden nunchucks in their nunchucks class. I don’t know about you-but I’m not messin’ with that. And I dared that thing rustling in the bushes to. In our last 1k we all realized that our fingers had tripled in size. All the blood and water in our bodies found its way to our phalanges to shape them into tasty looking sausages. We found a solution and raised our hands in front of us surgeon style to drain the fluid. In order to not look so silly we’d occasionally raise them in the air alternately to make it look like some sort of exercise. I’m pretty sure we still looked silly. We finished the 5k and were delighted (pissed) to see we still had to walk another half mile to a crosswalk to get across the street and back. Then we hit the “last stretch”- the place where they had the music blasting and about 50 cheerleaders in full uniform with pom-poms and girl scouts cheering us on to the end. We ran that part (haha) and through the finish line. It felt amazing and we were ready to do it again! Just kidding-we wanted our pancake breakfast! We high tailed it to the breakfast, where we encountered this sign:

(that’s me standing under it with my medal! Woowhoo!). Anyways, it’s been a while since I attended high school, but I didn’t remember body size segregation. We wondered where the Skinny Student Entrance was. And how very apropos (thank you, Emily) we had to enter here to get to our pancakes, bacon, and butter. The breakfast was amazing, and disappeared from my plate in literally 3.5 minutes. I had a wicked fun morning with the girlies, and can’t wait to do another one. Who wants to come next time?