Well, I guess I have a race calendar, because I signed up for another race: the Be The Match Walk+Run, May 16th, in Minneapolis. (The link is to my fundraising site, for anyone compelled and able to donate. I am extremely uncomfortable asking for money, even when it isn’t for myself.)

My mom asked me to do this race awhile ago and I said no, because it is the day after finals end. Now I have to be down in the Twin Cities anyway for a rocketry competition the following week (I am cool), so I decided why the heck not. My sister-in-law used to work for the Be The Match Foundation, two members of my family have had successful bone marrow transplants, and I have lost a family member and friend to blood cancer. One might say that the Be The Match Foundation is close to my heart.

I am getting closer to pulling the trigger on the Grandma’s Marathon entry. Right now most marathon predictors say I would run just under 6 hours, which is a good sign, but that’s based on one 5K, so I’m not going to trust it. I’m going to go off my next few long runs. I will probably sign up for the Park Point 5 Miler in July, too, but I don’t want to pay for it yet.

I got an ad in my race packet for a 5K at the end of May. It’s called the Insane Inflatable 5K, and is some kind of obstacle course, but without mud, and involves lots of slides and climbing and things. Look, I am an adult. I do not need to run a race through a glorified ball pit, or through mud, or through blasts of colored powder. I can just run a race. It’s fine. The race is also obscenely expensive. It was $49 for early registration and goes all the way up to $75 on race day. So it’s $50-$75 to climb a bunch of blow-up obstacles covered in the sweat, spit, and snot (or worse) of fellow overgrown children? No, thank you.

I know that’s mean, and there are plenty of people out there who enjoy the novelty races, but I don’t see the point. Are these races motivating a significant number of people to exercise? If so, bring ’em on! I would hope my impression that novelty runs encourage undertrained people to go out and hurt themselves or get in my way is an erroneous impression.

It’s pretty easy to see how signing up for races can be addicting, and expensive. I am able to keep my excitement at bay simply by looking at some of the previous race results to see I’m not fast enough to run smaller races yet, and also by reminding myself I’m a student who works part time.