The two biggest things that I will be talking about in this blog include The Big Event and the Half Marathon I decided to run in for God know's what reason.
The day of the big event was fun, but also incredibly long. We went to go help some people with willow sculptures starting at about 8. These people were one with the land. You can definitely tell that they were all for the environment and basically modern day hippies. They were nice, but you could just tell. The lady in charge had Blake, the student worker Nick, and myself sort sticks for the first three hours. After about 30 seconds of stick sorting, it kinda starts to lose its fun. So what do you do to make the time go by faster? Start asking Nick to do impressions of Americans and what he thinks of Americans. That was probably the best thing we could have done. He started bashing Cleveland and the Browns and everything he said was 100% accurate and hilarious.
She then moved me to the back of the lot to remove dirt and weeds from an old garden. We were approached by an American who grew up in West Virginia. After talking to her, we can see why Europeans have the views they have on Americans. She was super passive aggressive towards us and asked us for what specific reason we were studying in Bonn. She just didn't understand why we were studying in Bonn and was kind of annoyed by it. Oh well.
For lunch, they fed us turkey sandwiches and sausages and it was a great way to end the day...except she wasn't ready for us to be done yet. So that was kind of weird. To me, it kind of reminded me of putting the seventh inning stretch in the middle of the second inning. It just throws off everybody's timing and nobody really had the energy to do too much anymore because it was already 3. We finished the work but it just kinda put everybody in a weird mood.
We shall skip the part about the tests and classes and school work because this is Europe and yeah. I mean they were fine and all its just studying and books and nothing really exciting to blog about.
So the half marathon. Yep. I ran a half marathon. What was my least favorite thing about every sport I ever played? That would be running. Did I train for this marathon? I mean walking is cool but it definitely did not do anything for me. Was I passed by elderly people and lapped by people from Kenya? You betcha. Did I complete it though? Hell yeah I did.
The morning of, I was super pumped. I woke up at 5:30 and was at the bus stop by 6:45. We didn't have to be there till 8:30 but I was ready to go. I didn't eat breakfast or drink that much of anything because it wasn't like I was running a marathon or anything. We took off running at about 9:15. The first 5 km weren't that bad! I had a good pace and was able to talk to Gunnar the whole time. But a half marathon isn't 5 km. It's 22 km. At about the 6 mile mark, my pace had started to dwindle down a teensy bit and stopped at a water stand to get water but It's hard to drink and run at the same time so I kind of just threw it all over my face. Once I hit the 10 km mark, I actually stopped to get water and let me tell you what, that was the biggest mistake I had made that day other than getting up to run it.
As soon as I slowed down to a walk, my legs felt like straight rubber spaghetti twig things. It felt so good to walk and trying to run again was such a struggle. I could not get back into a good pace for the rest of the marathon. I ended up walking so much I felt horrible. All these old people were power walking and beating me on the running pace that I was going on. I was eventually lapped by kenyons, germans, everyone who had actually trained for it. I was lapped and they finished a whole marathon before I even finished a half. I couldn't believe it.
Also, bananas are the best thing in the world when you're running. I was so hungry I was thinking of eating vegetables and fruit and I had no idea what was wrong with me. I stopped and ate a banana from one of the stands and it was literally the best thing I had eaten in years it felt like.
By the end of the marathon, I was in so much pain in everywhere in my body. It said I finished the half marathon in like an hour and 48 minutes but that was a lie. I finished in a little under 2 and a half hours which honestly, without training, isn't that bad I don't think? Idk.
What was great about the marathon though was at the end, you had an unlimited supply of free food. I ate 4 bananas, 6 meatballs, 3 doughnuts, a crepe, a bowl of pretzels, an apple, an alcoholic free beer, water, fanta, and then crashed.
But I can say I ran a half marathon. Boo-ya.
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