Pounding pavement, pounding heart

Me at the finish line of the Friends of Crystal Beach 5-kilometre run,
half smiling, half wincing. 

It's one of my favourite Monty Python skits.

It's the one with the fat guy sitting in a restaurant, gorging himself, and with each bite demanding the waiter 'Get me a bucket,' before he eventually explodes after eating a wafer-thin mint.

I could relate to the gross glutton as I neared the finished line today at the Friends of Crystal Beach 5-kilometre run. I felt like I was going to hurl and explode all at once.

My apples and peanut butter were eaten two hours earlier — a safe distance, I thought, from my race start time at 11 a.m. But with each step, I could feel what was left of them churning in my stomach, apple-flavoured burps bouncing out of me as I bounced along Erie Road.

With each stride in those last two kilometres, my feet felt heavier. My chest felt more and more stretched by every quickened heart beat.

But after 28:44, I crossed the line, took a deep breath, put my hand to my mouth and asked the powers that be to spare me the embarrassment of spewing in front of hundreds of people, and relished in the fact that I ran the fastest 5k of my life.

I high-fived my husband Steve while giving him heck for running too fast for his slowpoke wife — a point I quickly recanted when the urge to throw up passed and the endorphins had fully kicked in.

One race down and at least eight more to go as I pound the pavement for the broken ground at the LCHS where a spay-neuter clinic will soon take shape.

So far, I've raised $70 and that makes me happy. Thank you to the awesome donors who have contributed. Tax receipts will soon be in the mail. While I've set a running goal in my run for the cats, I haven't set a fundraising goal. But with nine months to run, I'm hopeful I'm not too out of line to aim for $1,000.

Next race: the Casablanca 8km Classic in Grimsby Nov. 12. Here's to the next month of training and fundraising.