Me two months ago:

“Hey, there’s going to be a 5K race in Napa Valley! Wouldn’t that be nice? I’ll run amongst the vineyards, surrounded by deep green foliage, drinking in the smell of the fertile ground. I’ll run like a baby deer, gallivanting amongst all things wild and natural. The ‘Chariots of Fire’ theme will play in the background. It’ll be great. Where do I sign?”

Me on Sunday standing at the starting line, indeed surrounded by vineyards and green things and fertile ground, but staring down a hill with the approximate grade of Mt. Everest and knowing it’s a loop course, so what runs down must also run back up again:

“Holy shit.”

My dream of finishing with a new personal record (PR) time evaporated before me like a glass of spilt Napa wine on a hot day. I was crushed. Crushed, I tell you. It’s possible I’m the wee tiniest bit obsessively competitive. Just a little. I’d been training for a month to better my PR by two minutes and five seconds. I’d jacked up the speed on the treadmill a little each week. I’d done practice races every Sunday, come hell or bad parking. I’d run in the heat of mid-day. I’d run in spitting rain. I’d been sunburned. I’d drug myself across town to physical therapy three times a week. I was determined. Two minutes and five seconds, at a minimum, would be gone. Stomped like a grape at harvest season.

Of course, someone smarter than me would’ve stopped somewhere along that sweaty, gut-wrenching training schedule and looked at a freakin’ topographical map. But not me. I was too busy humming the “Chariots of Fire” theme.

So here I am three-quarters of the way through the course, already hot, already tired, already breathing like an asthmatic water buffalo, and I’m facing a grade I have never, ever come close to attempting in any of my training. Ever. I’ve already watched a quarter of the runners who passed me two miles ago stop and walk. They’re dropping like moths on a bug zapper. But by-freaking-god, if there’s no hope of me making my time, the least I can do is finish the race running. I’d rather collapse and be whisked away by the ambulance – that is indeed standing by – than to give up. I was going to finish that race at a run or finish it on my face, but I was not going to walk.

So I ran up the hill. I told myself it was a metaphor for life. I fell back on every cliche I could think of. Anything to keep one foot in front of the other. And eventually, I couldn’t even think that. There wasn’t enough blood left in my brain to form cohesive arguments with myself. I couldn’t form sentence with more than a half dozen words, even in my head. I was reduced to a childhood book. I literally recited the refrain from “The Little Engine That Could.”

“I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”

And I thought I could all the way to the finish line on my feet at a full-out run.

I didn’t give a rat’s patootie what my time was. I couldn’t believe I made it. I was obscenely, ridiculously proud of myself.

And only a little bit prouder half an hour later when they posted the results. I’d shaved off two minutes and eighteen seconds from my best time. A new PR.

(Side note: I was also obscenely, ridiculously proud of my friend who ran it with me and was the first woman to cross the finish line. Her trophy was an engraved wine bottle, and it was beautiful. Strangers came up to congratulate her. Other runners cheered for her as she passed them on the back end of the loop – including me. It’s really amazing to see people who are competing against each other also pulling for one another at the same time. We were all proud of her. And of ourselves. God, I love this sport.)