the panic button

It is almost midnight in Orlando. Our race is in 6 hours. We have to wake up at 4am to get to our corrals on time, and I should be sleeping, but I can’t. I have been having a great time with the gals, bonding over adoption and Haiti and running and the eating of carbs. But I am beginning to really panic. Not just a little nerves, or a case of the jitters. More like a DEFCON 5 freak-out.Remember when I said I was having stress dreams about this race, where everything was going awry? All day long today I kept thinking perhaps I would wake up and realize that this weather is, in fact, a wacky stress dream, and I will laugh at my crazysleeping brain for imagining that it was cold enough to snow in Orlando.
SNOW. In Orlando.
I lived here half my life and never heard of such a thing, and yet I fly out here to run my first half marathon and . . . insane weather. It is supposed to be 27 degrees when we start the race.
In addition, I think I’ve slept about 8 of the last 72 hours. between my nerves and my baby who is waking at all hours of the night. Today I finally called my mom and asked her to take Karis for the night so I could try to get a few hours of sleep. Thank goodness my mom is local.Fortunately I’m not the only one panicked about the weather. I think my friends from Haiti are more than a little shocked, and even the gals from colder climates are alarmed. We spent the evening strategizing how to stay warm. We have layers, we have gloves, and we have trashbags to go over all of it. I think we’ve all collectively decided that we just don’t care what our pace is. We’re in this together, and we’re gonna make the best of it, and have fun. As much fun as there is to be had in 27 degree weather on no sleep. While running.Right.Tomorrow may be miserable, but I’m still having the time of my life. Tonight I got to sit in a hot tub with red wine in a plastic cup and commiserate about the long wait in USCIS and the disorganization of MOI and the pros and cons of “adjudicate orphan first”, and everyone there knew what I was talking about. I cannot express how great that felt. We also got to gorge on chips and ice cream and not feel bad about it at all. Salty and sweet . . . what is better than that?
And we raised 60,000+ for Haiti, which is pretty freaking awesome.I’m not sure what the next 24 hours will look like, but something tells me it will one of the best and worst things I have ever done.A salty and sweet kind of thing.