Expectations have a way of influencing my emotions in ways that I often try to avoid. I like to be prepared to react in a given situation. Thusly, when my Friday afternoon fell apart (after a very trying week) it was all I could do to keep from letting those hot tears of frustration get the best of me. But, I held fast, and most everything came together in the end. Most importantly, I made it home to see my sweet sister for her 9th birthday party.

Saturday was my 23rd birthday. Dad made crepes for sis and her friends who had spent the night, which turned out to be a lovely birthday breakfast. Mmm…fresh crepes and lingonberry jam. I lazed about most of the morning since Mom & I had stayed up far too late talking the night before, and left midmorning to stop by Grandma & Papa’s for a quick hello. I finally made it down to the dropzone about lunchtime, brimming with excitement at the prospect of spending the afternoon doing one of my favorite things.

Unfortunately, it was one of those slow days when no one is out, so we organized a small load to go up so I could get at least one birthday jump. I made peace with my disappointment on the way to altitude, so imagine my delight when, by the time we landed there were two more jumpers out for the day! More jumps! For the second jump of the day, we set up a train, where three of us were connected in a sitting position. Lots of fun until opening, when BLAM, I took a chest strap to the face. For whatever reason, that opening was very fast, too fast for me to even look up and watch my canopy inflate. Once I was situated with my toggles, I took an inventory of my teeth (all present and accounted for) and the state of my skin (bleeding a little, but not nearly as bad as it could have been). A near perfect landing followed, thank goodness.

At this point, I think I could have opted out of my plans to complete a bikini skydive to celebrate my birthday and no one would have faulted me for it. I mean, my face was bleeding. But…I needed to do it for me. I wanted to do it. So…we packed up and I stripped down and then it was time to take off. Conveniently, none of the other girls were out that day…so it was just me and three of the guys on that load. Eek. I guess there’s not a lot of better ways to test your capacity for embarrassment!

Fortunately, that jump went off without a hitch, though I will admit that I was a little…well…freezing. And, according to those on the ground, we were visible from exit to landing, meaning that my impossibly white skin made us impossible to NOT see the entire time. Upon landing, I grimaced at the idea that the entire jump had just been caught on not one, but TWO video cameras. Again with the embarrassment thing. Skin just doesn’t look good in freefall. We packed up pretty quickly after that, and I shivered for at least a half an hour despite putting on long pants and a long sleeve shirt. A mellow birthday dinner followed, and then it was time to go home and get some good sleep in preparation for my very first race.

5:15 a.m. Sunday came WAY too early, but the anticipation of the days events helped shake off some of the grogginess and I managed to navigate the road closures on the way to the race and make it just after our team’s intended meetup time. I was set to run a marathon relay with three others, two of whom I know from church and one other I only met for the 2 seconds we were exchanging the baton at our relay exchange station.

I didn’t actually run until a little after 9:30 a.m. I opted not to listen to music for my leg of the relay. Six miles is a lot of time for a slow runner like me, which translates to a great deal of thinking time and space. I met a number of awesome competitors, and thoroughly enjoyed the encouragement provided by the bystanders. And let me tell you, there is nothing like that last push to get to your teammate for the handoff.

After we handed off, I got on the bus to head back to the finish and meet up with our other teammate. I was tired and happy and kind of glad it was over. The three of us enjoyed the festivities at the park for a few hours before heading out, basking in the good energy of the day’s events.

Since yesterday I’ve had a lot of time to think about the race and I’m really struggling with feeling excited about it. Having run the shortest possible distance available in that race, I feel that I can’t even compare my experience to the other racers’. I walked much more than I’d have liked, and can’t help but be disappointed about that. I try to rationalize the idea that it doesn’t matter, any of those other people, and not to compare myself to them, but my performance anxiety is pretty strong and hard to convince otherwise. I WANT to be more proud of myself, and maybe I will be, eventually. Today, though it’s hard. I want to do it again, and better. I want to train harder and set goals and heck, I’d really just like to be able to RUN the whole time next time.

For now, I’ll pretend my slightly stiff legs and neck aren’t as stiff as they really are, and I’ll keep fighting this scratchy throat and I’ll hope my face heals up soon. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a run in on Wednesday…after all, there is that 10K I’d been hoping to do…

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