The night was already set up to be awesome.

There were bacon-wrapped scallops and homemade pizzas and a coconut cream pie.  There was liquor in all its various forms.  And best of all there were our best friends Christine and Ryan over to our apartment for the first time.  Without a single addition to the evening, it was going to be a damn good one.

But then another thing happened, a seemingly innocent one.  One of us, I don’t remember who, brought up the Saratoga Casino and Raceway, known to Saratogians as “the Racino.”  We suddenly realized that despite our seventeen and two years of living in Saratoga, none of us had ever been to the Racino.  And maybe it was the spirit of excitement or maybe it was the couple of drinks, I don’t know, but 11:00pm on a Friday night suddenly seemed like the perfect time to go to the Racino.  (Note: it’s also the perfect time to go to London, Dublin, and Vegas.  We like to make ridiculous travel plans when we drink that we haven’t the time or means to fulfill.   But unlike those destinations, we have the time and means to go to the 2 1/2 miles to the Racino.)  So we got in our cars and bopped up to the Racino.  (And no, no one driving was intoxicated.  That’s why I keep Kyle around.)

The Racino, as the name would indicate, is one part harness raceway and one part casino.  And as we found last Friday, it does neither of these things well.  The casino part of it is all video, and mostly slots.  There were a few video “table” games, looked over by a video dealer.  (If no one was playing the game, the “dealer” would stand there and look bored.  I suppose they should be commended for accuracy.  Though can you imagine putting that on your resume?  “Video Roulette Dealer.”  Awesome.)  There was even a “high rollers” room, where you could play the expensive version of the same slots.  ($25 Kitty Glitter, anyone?)  But it was mostly a slot floor.  And just like every slots floor I’ve ever been on, it had that familiar pallor of depression and desperation.    The people who looked like they hadn’t moved from that nickle slot machine in hours.  The people who had a refillable casino card on their key chain.  The glazed eyes, the clenched jaw, the shallow breathing.  For all the noise of the machines most everyone was silent, and our animated talking and excited movement seemed out of place.

But when in Rome…

So we sat down behind some penny machines and inserted our dollars.  Approximately 45 seconds later our dollars were gone.  Eh, c’est la vie.  Christine and Kyle moved on to some video poker machines.  I don’t know how to play poker, so I was content to watch.  Well, I was content until I realized that he was playing $1 video poker.  Considering we’d only brought $20 for betting, I was kinda pissed.  I mean, you can zip through $20 when you’re at a $1 machine pretty fucking quick.  But seeing as this was a night of little adventures, I contented myself with busting his balls and giving him shit when he lost.

He lost a few.  Then he won $5.  Lost a few more.  Won $2.  He was loosing, but he somehow managed to stay just above his original investment.  About 10 minutes into his game, he told me that he’d play until he got back down to his original $20 and then he’d cash out.  A little fun was had, no harm no foul.

And then this happened:

We couldn’t fucking believe it.

The impressive thing is not that $181 was won.  The impressive thing is that $181 was won by us.  (Yes, I’m inserting myself into this win.  I’m pretty sure a couple of his hands were played out of spite, so I’m taking some of the credit.)  We don’t play aggressively or with any kind of strategy.  We play strictly for fun, with the intention of loosing every penny we put into those machines.  So when we didn’t loose…it was kinda more than we could handle.

We may or may not have lost our shit.

Calmed and dignity restored, we turned our attention towards the racetrack.  The racetrack was equally depressing and disappointing.  I mean, as far as harness racetracks go it’s probably pretty nice.  But when you stand it up next to our world famous Saratoga Race Track less than a mile away, with it’s immaculate landscaping and towering luxury boxes…well, florescent stadium lighting and some benches just doesn’t measure up.  The buzz of tens of thousands of patrons and the roar of joy and defeat when the horses thunder across the line at the Race Track is unmatched by the Racino’s half-dozen observers silently watching the race while they clutched their tickets and smoked.  And still off the high of our big win, voices giddy and full of laughter, we stood out like meth-addicts in a Catholic church.

Now, as seasoned veterans of the race track, we know that watching horse racing without betting on it is boring.  Without the gambling, it’s just a bunch of ponies running in circles.  So our natural instinct was to place a bet.  But at the same time, we hesitated.  We were pretty sure that Kyle’s big poker win had used up all our gambling luck for the next ever, and highly doubted it would hold out for a horse race.  But horse racing without betting is like french fries without salt, so we crossed our fingers and threw our dollars into the wind.

Per tradition, I got to pick our horse using my tried and true method: whichever horse’s name amused me the most.  I chose Petticoat Junction because it sounded like a funny way of saying “vagina.”  We put a $1 across the board on him, Christine and Ryan placed their own bets on their horses, and we made our way to the benches outside.

So the race started and immediately our horse found himself at the back of the pack.  Aaand then behind the pack.  Aaand then really far behind the pack.  Aaand then he was a half a lap behind the rest of the tightly grouped pack.  It was comical.  There he was, trotting along happy as a clam, a full half lap behind everyone else.  We laughed hysterically at the fact that after our amazing luck at poker, we’d somehow managed to pick the one retarded horse.  That’s our luck.

But then, as the pack of horses and harnesses rounded the near corner, one of the horses bumped into another horse.  Suddenly one of the harnesses had flipped and there was a tangle of horses and jockeys and harnesses.  Some of them managed to pull from the heap and finish the race, but both the horses that Christine and Ryan had bet on were down for the count.  And somehow, despite the fact that Petticoat Junction was a half lap behind the rest and wasn’t even there for the accident, he still managed to get knocked down.  I don’t even know how it happened.  It’s like he took one look at the mess and decided to go ahead and hurt himself before someone else did.  But when the dust settled, all three of the horses we’d bet on had been disqualified and led off the track.  Our money wasn’t just gone; it had gone up in flames.

And that’s when we realized what had happened.  Our luck wasn’t just gone.  She’d swept in, fucked us good, and left just as violently.  She’d give us a wild night, oh yes, a one night stand we wouldn’t forget.  But we’d woken up to vomit on our pillow and a wart that oozes.  Luck was a whore.  If she had her way our car would catch fire in the parking lot, just to make sure we remembered her.

So we did the only thing we could do.  We chalked it up to an amazing night with friends and got the fuck out of there.

I would like to preface this by saying that Kyle and I are fine.  Completely.  So no one needs to freak out and start looking for a replacement son or anything.  (Seriously, you didn’t think you could get rid of me, did you?)

However, I will propose that a little bit of distance can be a healthy thing in a relationship.

In case you missed it or forgot it or never gave a shit about it in the first place, you’ll remember that back in May Kyle received a badass promotion that made him my boss.  This has been awesome for many, many reasons.  I now have awesome state health insurance.  I’m no longer paying up to $20 a day for parking thanks to Kyle’s parking pass.  And those super long, exhausting days?  Are emotionally so much easier because I have him there for support.  Oh, plus the fact that Kyle’s an awesome boss who’s making my work environment all around a better place to be.  (Even if he still makes me mop.)  Plus, plus, I think we make a great team; ever since we started working on shows together in college we’ve always worked really well together.  Basically I get to go to work everyday and work side by side with my best friend.  It’s kinda the best thing ever.

But there is a small downside.  As we all know, there is such thing as too much of a good thing; even fried bologna sandwiches will taste like ass if you have to eat nothing but fried bologna sandwiches everyday.  Kyle is  definitely my fried bologna sandwich, and I am Kyle’s chili dogs.  (His original answer to “What’s you most favorite food?” was a Denny’s Lumberjack Slam.  I don’t even know what to do with that.)

We wake up together.  We drive 40 minutes to work together.  We work side by side.  We take our meals together.  We drive home together.  We watch tv and sometimes get to eat dinner together.  We go to bed together.  And on our days off?  We tend to spend it together, whether we’re downtown shopping or in the mountains hiking or just hanging out around the apartment.

We are pretty much always together.

The problem with this is that it means that we are exposed to the immensely wide spectrum of each other’s various personalities and moods.  Every dip and rise and nuance and ripple in our emotions throughout the day is felt by the other person.  And that’s a lot of pressure, you guys.  As his wife, I want to try my damndest to be his emotional rock, to sooth and support and praise and encourage him depending on what he needs.  (I’m going to go ahead and assume he feels the same way about me; he fucking better.)  And to try to be that person for someone 24/7 can be exhausting.  Especially for him, considering (let’s not kid ourselves here) I need a much stronger rock than he does.

And then there’s my greatest fear. Becoming this:

 

Or, even worse, this:

 

I fear loosing our individual selves.  That we’ll become that annoying couple that can’t do anything without each other and become an empty caricature of people.  A couple can no longer function without each other.  Like pretty much every married couple portrayed in commercials.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe with all my heart that Kyle makes me a better person, but I want to be a whole person.  I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I can’t think or act for myself, and lord knows I don’t wish that for him either.

Enter the Anit-Date Day.

Most couples, especially if they have children, find themselves scheduling a Date Night in an attempt to stay close and have some time for just the two of them.  We do the opposite.  Anti-Date Day is where we agree ahead of time that we can take the day for ourselves.  We don’t have to go out together, we don’t have to talk to each other, we don’t have to look at each other.  We can do whatever it is that we need to do in order to make ourselves happy and sane, completely without guilt.  I can paint my nails and watch Criminal Minds.  Kyle can sleep until noon and lay in bed and watch tv until 2:00.  I can go window shopping downtown and go to the Farmer’s Market.  Kyle can play Portal until his eyes bleed.  Even something as simple as watching tv in separate rooms on Monday nights so I can watch Intervention and he can watch his nerd shows goes a long way.  It sounds selfish to turn to your spouse and say, “I know you hate it when I do X activity, but fuck you, it makes me happy and I’m going to do it.”  Okay, it is selfish.  But sometimes if a person isn’t a little selfish, they stop caring and start being a lot selfish.  And that leads to decisions like who’s going to get the cats.

I love Kyle.  Love him with everything I’ve got.  He makes me a better person and my life would be empty without him.  He has my heart.

But sometimes the best way I can love him is by telling him to fuck off for a while.

I did it.

2 hours, 22 minutes, and 13 seconds.

That’s how long it took me to run 13.1 miles.

You guys, it was fucking amazing.

I woke up at 6am and I was instantly awake.  It’s like I went from unconscious to bunny-on-crack-cocaine in three seconds flat.  Brushed my teeth, washed my face, dressed.  Bandaged my feet.  (I get chronic blisters on my arches and have a couple toenails that have been a bit tender lately.)  Ate some oatmeal with peanut butter and raisins.  Oh, and freaked out about the temperature.  You guys, it was 40 fucking degrees when I woke up, and it couldn’t have been more than 42 when we left the house at 7:00.  Which added plenty of fuel to the nervous energy that was bubbling in my chest.

We drove downtown and found a place to park close to the start/finish line.  The drive couldn’t have been longer than 5 minutes long, but the entire time my stomach was so knotted and twisted that I questioned my oatmeal’s ability to remain where it was.  Once we parked, it was a short one block walk to the starting line…and then what?  It was approximately 45 minutes until the start of the race, and I had no idea what to do.

Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty to be done.  Like most runners, I have a ritual of stretching and warming up that precedes my normal runs.  But this wasn’t a normal run.  Everything about that morning was different.  The place, the timing, the circumstances, the energy; nothing about it felt the same.  I just stood there, awkwardly clutching my little bag of dry clothes and band aids, mumbling, “Um…maybe I should…I guess…maybe now…”  It took Kyle gently taking me by the arm and saying, “Do you need to stretch first?” to get me focused.

Which is how I found myself doing this:

For those wondering, that is a bike rack.  And I am stretching my iliopsoas (hip) muscle.  I usually do this on the back of the couch while I play Bejeweled and watch tv.  But, as previously established, nothing about this morning was normal, so the bike rack it was.  Equally effective, not quite so kind to the ass.

After that there was some brisk walking, more stretching, followed by that awkward hoppy butt-kicky thing that runners do that looks like a warm up but is really just a great way to burn some nervous energy.  And then it was time to get ready to go.

Pinned on my bib, plugged in my headphones, strapped on my bottle full of frozen sports drink, and stripped off my long sleeve shirt.  It was fucking cold, you guys, but Kyle convinced me that I’d be more comfortable without it.  (20/20 hindsight, I don’t think he had a fucking clue what he was talking about, but he turned out to be absolutely right.)

And then it was time to line up.

I truly felt like the nervous excitement was going to spill out of my mouth like nervous excitement…vomit.

And then it started and I was running.

(If you can’t tell, I’m the greenish-yellow blob that’s crossing the starting line.)

It was fucking amazing.

Journey blasting in my ears.  The adrenalin exploding out of my chest.  My legs wanting badly to fly, but my head telling me that I had 13 more miles to go and to slow that ass down.  And I’m grinning like a jackass and can’t stop laughing because I’m finally doing the thing I’ve been dreaming of doing for a year now.   I’m running with 880 other people, a raging river of people swelling ahead and behind me, and it’s the biggest fucking thrill I’ve ever felt in my life.

And then there was the race.  I remember bits and pieces of it, but truth be told it went by so fast.  Luckily, I had Kyle, my one-man ninja cheering/photography team, so photographic evidence exists.

This was 2ish miles into the race.  After waving to Kyle, I shouted to him, “Am I last?”  He made a face and said, “…kinda…” in a way that you could tell he was trying not to hurt my feelings.  A little later I would find out that by “last” Kyle meant “close to last,” and there were actually about 15 people behind me, but at the time I thought he meant THE last person in the race.  So every time I passed a person, I would think to myself, “Okay, I finished before one person…okay, I’m going to finish before two people.”

Another fun fact.  This is the guy who won the race.

He was almost 4 miles ahead of me.  His average minutes-per-mile pace for the entire race?  5:05.  Yes, that’s five minutes and five seconds per mile.  For 13  miles.  I’m just going to throw this out there, I’m not entirely sure I could run ONE mile at that pace, let alone thirteen.  Let’s all take a minute and think about how fucked up that shit is.

Anyhoo.  Back to the race.

I know, it looks like I’m completely alone, doesn’t it?  Not true.  Granted, I was pretty much at the back of the crowd for the whole race.  I finished 783rd out of 880, so to say I was a threat of any variety would be a gross over statement.  Fuck that, it would be a lie.  But I was never completely alone.  There were always other runners to chase, someone always just ahead.  (Except in this one picture.)

One of my favorite moments of the race (not pictured, but use your imagination,) came a little after mile 9.  As we entered another park, the trail suddenly plunged sharply downhill.  The hill couldn’t have been more than 20′ long, but it was pretty damn steep.  You pretty much had two options: mince carefully down, arms out and leaning backwards, or open up the brake, let gravity do her thing, and charge down it like your ass is on fire.

Guess which one I chose.

Damn skippy.  I shouted, “Let’s go!” and flew down that hill, laughing hysterically as I went.  It was beyond exhilarating.  It only lasted a few seconds, but I literally felt like I was flying.  Fucking amazing.

And then there was THE HILL.  Looming a little after mile 11, I call it that because everyone that I spoke to about this race mentioned THE HILL like it would destroy my body and soul.

I disagree.

Yes, it was a hill.  By definition, it was more difficult than flat land.  But I’ve battled both longer and steeper, and I did not think it warranted the ominous tone with which it was spoken.  On the other hand, Kyle said that a large portion of runners (especially those with me in the back of the pack) walked it.  So maybe I just don’t have the respect for THE HILL that I should.

And sooner than I could ever believe, I was nearing the finish line.

For most of the race, I held myself back in a very comfortable pace.  Despite my over-competitive desire to pick people off one at a time, I kept remind myself that it wasn’t about how many people I beat but about the experience and finishing.   Also, that I didn’t want to die.  Until about mile 9.  At that point, I let myself ease the brake off a little.  Not chase people down, exactly, but certainly start staring holes in their backs.  And the last half mile?

I let it loose.

See, I have this philosophy when it comes to running.  It dates back to my high school cross country days, but it’s one that I apply to all of my running, even my training runs.

Leave everything on the pavement. 

That means that when I cross that end line, I don’t want to have a thing left in me.  I give it my everything.  Even if I am absolutely dying, I dig deep down in the bottom of  my gut to find that little extra and let it loose.

It’s a deeply over-complicated way of saying that I like to sprint at the end.

Last mile I started going after people.  One by one, they were mine.  And the last half mile?

I left it all. on. the. pavement.

I have a vague memory of shouting, “This is it!” as I let loose.  And I fucking flew.  Passing people right and left, the whole time laughing and crying and just feeling so exuberant that I was truly afraid that I would throw up because I was just so fucking happy.

Of course, the flying feeling of elation didn’t last too long. During the race, with the exception of some blister and toenail troubles, I felt great.  My lungs felt amazing, my legs felt amazing, my whole body felt amazing.  I wasn’t even really hot!  Despite the cold temperature at the start, it warmed up to an extremely comfortable 55 or so and there was a lovely breeze, so I wasn’t even sweating as much as usual.  I felt great.  But about 10 minutes after I’d finished, everything that I should have been feeling during the race slammed me.  All that pain that should have slowly broken my soul over 13 miles hit me at once, and it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my whole body.

My feet were none  too happy either.

Which is why I spent the rest of Sunday (and a good chunk of Monday, too,) in some form of horizontal.  I was wrecked.

But honest to god, I take every ounce of pain willingly.  The pain?  Is nothing compared to the pride that I feel.  Because I did it.  Ran 13.1 miles, the whole time grinning like a jackass.

It was fucking amazing.