The Hard Truth

Every year, we update this blog so that our fans can follow us as we suffer make our way through New Hampshire. I like the blog. Really. There are puppies on it. It’s nice.

But I feel like y’all aren’t getting the complete story about what really goes down in those dark hills. It’s not all smiles and butterfly costumes.

On the contrary, I’m here to tell you that all of this positivity is mere icing on a cake full of poisonous razor blades that have been soaked in a vat of deadly viruses. (To use the common cliché). Here are some of the hard truths about being a non-ruling-class member of the Rosie Ruiz Fan Club.

• They make you sign a waiver. 

• They shrug at rumors of a bear in the vicinity.

• They make you watch as a “man” dressed up like a toilet leads runners in a poorly choreographed “motivational” “dance”.

• They accuse you of participating in some bewilderingly illogical meal ticket scandal and then all of that stuff that happens to the protagonist in Kafka’s The Trial happens to you. 

• They gleefully take pictures of you while medical personnel are resuscitating you.

• They make running a flat 6.2-mile leg at 6 am seem like a wussy thing to be doing.

• They fly in a half-man/half-gazelle from Texas (ostensibly named "Weldon") so that you can listen to him spout off about how much he “enjoyed” running up and down the 9.2-mile mountain that almost killed you last year. You also get to watch him run it faster than you did. And without sweating. And while eating a muffin.

• They force you to meet new and amazing people that you grow to really like and then, after the race, they take those people away. (Perhaps this is because those people were not involved in the meal ticket scandal and so are free to go).

• And, despite all of this, they somehow get your brain to permanently believe that this crazy event is one of your favorite things to do. Rosie Ruiz Fan Club, you are what heroin would be if instead of making you high it made you exercise, lose sleep, be cold, and ride around in a smelly van. I need you. It's true.