Sanity Is Overrated

This column originally appeared in the July 24 edition of The Journal-News.

On Wednesday morning, I made my routine stop at the Litchfield Police Department to pick up the accidents from the last week. After exchanging pleasantries with the friendly faces in the dispatch room, Police Chief Lee Jarman said that he had heard a bad rumor about me.

"I heard that you did the Big Dawg Dare?" he said. "Are you crazy?"

Proudly, I can say that I am. Two years after covering the inaugural 5K obstacle course run in Litchfield, I finally took the plunge myself and participated in the race this past Saturday, July 19. Notice that I was careful to choose my words in the previous sentence, using "participate" instead of "run."

As a physical specimen that is more fleet of truck than fleet of foot, I ended up walking most of the race and came in 289th out of 290 with a time of 1:12:50.41. While my time was a little slower than I originally hoped, I'm happy with the fact that I merely finished the 3.1 mile torture test after promising to run it last year, then reneging when we accidentally scheduled our vacation for that weekend.

Granted I probably could have run more of the course than I did, and may have saved a little time if I didn't stop to help my brother-in-law Scott try to find his wedding ring, which he lost on the giant slip-and-slide just before the one mile mark. Everyone has been very encouraging in the fact that I gave it a try and didn't give up, regardless of what my time was.

Despite the Big Dawg Dare being the most physically challenging thing that I have done in my 33 years, I never once thought of quitting. Not when I slipped going into the water at the drainage pipe and landed face first (Mary has a dynamite picture of both my splashdown and my misery afterwards). Not when it took me four times to get over the hay bale because I have the vertical leap of a tree stump. And not when I had to bear crawl through the muck, not once, not twice, but four times at different points on the course, the last of which came at the finish line and left me looking like something that crawled out of a swamp in a bad science fiction movie.

Whenever things got tough, I remembered what Brian Hollo told me when I sat down with him for an interview about the inaugural event, that all of the obstacles would be challenging, but safe and doable. That's a pretty good description. Besides the fiasco with the hay bale, nothing really seemed impossible. A couple of times I was worried about losing a shoe in the mud or falling down a hill, but overall I figured that as long as I took my time, I'd make it okay.

Like most of the people there, I benefitted from having a pretty awesome cheering section throughout the course. My beautiful wife Mary was there to not only document the race for The Journal-News, but also to spur me on when I needed it, although I think she enjoyed my many miscues as much as my successes. My parents were also there - my mom to help watch my daughter Grace while Mary took pictures and my dad, because I think he assumed that I was going to die and he didn't want to miss it.

One of the biggest helps though were the random acts of encouragement that happened throughout the race, which came from volunteers, other racers and those who simply came to cheer on the participants. Almost every person I came across on the course was upbeat and positive, even if I looked like evidence of the zombie apocalypse.

To me, that was the best thing about the race. I saw very few somber faces cross the finish line. Determined, yes, but not somber. Regardless of whether you were running for the big bucks, like Litchfield grad Caleb Thompson, who finished in the top three for the third consecutive year, or just out for a casual 5K jaunt through the mud like myself, each participant left the course with a feeling of accomplishment, which was pretty cool.

So cool, I think I'll do it again. My biggest mistake from when I ran my first 5K in 2011 was that I didn't have another goal that would keep me running. I'm not going to make that same mistake twice and I've already verbally committed to doing another race, this one benefitting autism awareness with my sister Mikaela, who also did the Big Dawg Dare with me on Saturday, but in a much faster time.
I figure if I don't fall off the wagon this time and can do a few races with Miki, then I should be able to shave a few minutes off this year's Big Dawg Dare time, providing that her husband doesn't lose his ring again.

But even if I don't, I'll still have the satisfaction of knowing that I accomplished something that a lot of people aren't even willing to try. Like I said early, I'm proud to call myself crazy in that regard, but even prouder to be a "Big Dawg."

One of my finer moments from Saturday's Big Dawg Dare.