Race report : Falmouth Road Race '09

Picture this.
It's 6 in the morning on Sunday. Meg and I are waiting for my brother PJ to come pick us up to drive to Falmouth. I've been dressed and ready since 5:15. I'm nervous - but not entirely surprised - that PJ is late and incommmunicado. I love my brother more than anything, but he can be unbelievably irresponsible, and is not a morning person. I'm cursing my good name for not somehow making the impossible possible, and finding an overnight parking spot in Southie so the driving impetus would be on me. I've called him twice. He never picks up though, nobody in my family does. We distrust cellphones and always keep the ringers off.

Finally, he calls. He's frantic, his alarm "didn't go off". He's on the road and says he'll be here in 20. We're already late. Way late. I bite my tongue, remain calm, tell him it's fine. At least he's on the road. I run down the street to the neighborhood bakery and grab coffees and breakfast sandwiches and bottles of water. When I get back, Meg mumbles from her position under the covers that the phone's ringing. It's PJ again. Now he's completely freaking out - "I've just been pulled over, this guy is threatening to put me away. He says I was speeding and I smell like beer."
Again, I bite my tongue and remind PJ that while I understand the logic of not changing one's clothes or showering before running a sunny 7-miler, that if one was out at a party the previous night and spilled beer on one's outfit, one should probably have considered changing before getting into one’s mother’s borrowed car and speeding on the Mass Pike.
I tell him to keep me posted, and hang up so I don't run to the taxi stand and make a cab take me to the general area of exit 22 so I can wring my brother's neck. My nails have left giant red marks in my palms. I go to tell Meg what's going on, but she's in the bathroom throwing up. "Come look!" she shouts "There are bugs in my vomit!"
"Why are you looking at your puke? Stop right now. Flush it."
"It's cool though! Come look!"
"Absolutely not"
PJ calls again. I pick up. He says he can't find the car's registration, and he also might have misplaced his wallet last night so he doesn't have his driver's license. He gave the overly aggressive cop his passport and is now just sitting in the car waiting, in his own mind, to be handcuffed and thrown in the slammer.
At my repeated insistence, Meg finally stops inspecting her own throw-up and flushes the toilet.
I take a deep breath.
I feel like Michael Bluth.

By some bizarre miracle, the cop lets PJ off with just a ticket, which PJ refuses to look at. He arrives to pick us up, and I notice he's wearing the race shirt from the last 5K we did. It's electric lime with the words "Will Run for BEER" printed on the front in purple comic sans. He's also wearing the Cursed Cargo Camo Shorts, which he wore the last two times he lost his wallet and also the time he ran them through the wash with his passport still in the pocket. When I mention this might have something to do with the police officer's attitude, he replies with a string of profanities.
"These shorts need to go. They have to be BURNED."
I suggest a Viking Funeral.

About halfway there, he's certain he's forgotten to bring his bag with his running clothes and shoes. By the time we get to the Bourne Bridge, he's made up his mind to run the entire 7.2 mile course barefoot, in the aforementioned "Will Run for BEER" shirt and Cursed Cargo Camo Shorts. "I have to." he says "It's for the KIDS."

We finally make it, over an hour too late. Of course, we get caught in an absolutely epic cluster-f of traffic, and opt to peel off into a parking lot and run to the meeting place. PJ checks the trunk and realizes he did in fact bring his sneakers. So that's good. Though I think it would have taught him a nice lesson to have to run barefoot. We jog to the house that was designated as a meeting spot for the Ronald McDonald House runners. One of the House volunteers drives us to the buses that drive runners to the start. We run to that too. It's the absolute last bus. The roads are closed and they let us off about a mile from the course start.
We run there too.

After all that, we make it into our starting corrals with the approximately 10,000 other runners, about 5 minutes before the starting gun sounds.
Just because this is all amazingly clutch does not make it okay.
Nor does it make it any less hilarious.

Meg hasn't been training much and has never run more than 3 or 4 miles, but insists she'll finish if she can just stay with me. I'm not sure I can handle the responsibility of being a pacer. She stops to walk at about half a mile, and I tell her she can do it, keep it up, and she starts to jog again. This trend repeats several times over the first mile until she just gives up and I lose her in the thick crowd. I stop and wait for her after mile 2, but she never shows. I get back into the crowd and hope she makes it to the end.

My race was uneventful. After the slow start, and waiting for Meg, and having to walk for a bit due to an excruciating side stitch, I lost my hope for a good time. But, I don't really care. I'm just glad we made it here. I brought my camera and just enjoy the course and the crowds and the frequent water stops and the kazoo & banjo band at mile 6 and the stunning view of the ocean. Before I know it, it's over. This year, I'm smiling instead of crying as I see the American flag fluttering from the crane over the finish line.

PJ made a great time of 1:04. Meg finished before the course closed. And together, with fewer runners than last year's 40, the Ronald McDonald House team raised over $70,000 for the Boston Ronald McDonald House, with more still coming in. This amount helps defray about 1/8 of the House's operating costs for a given year.
Sometimes, in so many ways, making it to the starting line is the greatest challenge of all.