Would you like a beer with your Zombie?

I love to sing. I sing to almost every song on the radio, I sing songs in my head. Singing is one of my greatest passions. If I didn't have music well...let's not go there. The thing is, singing requires no physical activity on my part. I don't dance maybe a little shuffle here or there, but singing requires only my voice and I like to say I have gotten pretty good at it over the years. My sister and I head to the dive karaoke bar that has a flamboyant K.J that should be in a show like Gypsy, but his choice is to play songs that drunk people think they sound good too, me included I am sure. Truth is, I haven't sang in awhile and I am looking forward to ONE beer (race tomorrow must be at form) and a song. Well, as the night turns into three songs, and three pints of  Hefeweizen beer with one big glass of water before the fourth pint is started I knew that I was in for a hard day tomorrow. We all said goodbye to each other at midnight with my sister giving me a hard look of a Jägermeister aftershock telling me I will be over at the house by 9am to pick me up for the Run.
Mandy is right on time. My hair is french braided on both sides so my loose A-lined cut won't get in my eyes when I  am swerving away from Zombies. I have taken three Advil (precaution), I have wrapped my right ankle as tight as it will go without cutting off the blood, and I have my brand new orthopedic running shoes on, so I am as prepared as I can be. All I keep hearing though is Brian's voice in my head to be careful, and this where I get nervous. What if I can't complete the run? I will have to go back to Reno and tell everyone that I failed. It is funny there is a lot of things that I will never be able to do. Like climb a gym class rope, cross the monkey bars, get my round butt over a retaining wall while running from Zombies, and falling with graceful thump onto the side. (Yes I did this, and it took my sister a few minutes to catch her breath from laughing so hard.) Anyway, I was determined to get through this with my flags or no flags, to be able to just say I did it. We get to a place that looked like a grass filled shaded area that is about two hours outside of Portland in Washington. It was beautiful, it looked perfect and I thought this won't be too bad. Now even though we were up North we all have noticed this summer it has been incredibly warm. And with the Northwest this was no exception, and put humidity on top it. As my sister and I parked the car and walked up the hill to check in I noticed something peculiar. After you pass the tree lines all you see is dirt and sun, and ninety degree hills. Oh good lord, we are at a motor cross race course, and as I look around it doesn't seem so easy. We get checked in and the first thing we noticed was a big beautiful sign that says BEER in haunted Zombie font. My sister and I had the perfect twin moment, we looked at each other and started walking towards the beer sign. We have an hour and half till our run time and nothing sounded sweeter.
Time to line up. We head up again another hill to our starting point when I realize I have to go the bathroom. (Yes, I have a point) so I head down the hill to the port-o-zombie potty did my business and headed, yes you guess it back up the hill. By the time I get there my sister is waving to me hurry up, we are the last ones to line up in the "dessert line" (really slow people) Fast people were the "Appetizers", and medium runners were "Entrees." So as we are waiting to start, a couple of ladies with red neck trucker shirts with eagles spreading their wings, or a lion jumping out the bush over their tank tops. Mandy and I liked them automatically. We chatted on why were doing the race and how we plan to accomplish this task. We all agreed that we will run as team and work together. By this time I have told them about my C.P and that I will need help IF there was a retaining wall. They think it is wonderful that I am doing this race and what an inspiration that I am. It is really hard for me to say thank you for the compliment because I am nothing special. I have mild C.P, there are folks out there that have it much worse. My friend Angie recently explained what these wonderful ladies were really complimenting about. "They are not giving you empty praises, they are praising you because of the person that is standing in front of them is smiling and is talking with all the passion in the world for this one race. Take the compliment Casey, you deserve it."