Gorillas, bananas beat me in 5k race

Running usually makes me feel good. I finish a run and I feel proud and accomplished. Except for Saturday.

I headed out of the house before sunrise Saturday to go to the Swazi 5k on the campus of Southern Nazarene University. My husband and I founded a charity to help children in South Africa, so I felt that it would be good to support other Oklahomans who are making a difference in Africa.

I was ridiculously early, so I spent time stretching on the lush green grass. I went through my normal stretching routine and still had time to kill. I looked around at the real runners and decided to copy what they were doing. They looked like they were in shape, so they had to be doing something right, probably.

I eased into a hurdler’s stretch and that’s when I discovered the grossest thing I have ever seen. I apparently have missed shaving the same spot on the outside of my knee for the past, oh, 10 years. It was horrifying. It was like I was man over those 3 square inches of my leg. I spun around and discovered the same thing on my other knee. What was happening?!? It was terrible. I felt like I was looking at the dark side of the moon. I thought of all the times I had worn skirts since the late ’90s that I had apparently been terrifying any passersby with the two freak shows that I will call my outer knee caps. Were my arms not reaching there? Was this like a blind spot you get while you’re driving? What are the physics of this error that I had obviously repeated too many times to count?

I don’t want to think about it. I promised myself then and there that I would never miss those spots again. Don’t worry. My outer knee caps are now clear.

Anyway, so I was stretching and I saw something even worse than hair outer knee caps: guys dressed as gorillas and bananas. I have no idea why they were dressed in costume for this run, but they were. There were two bananas, a guy dressed in a gorilla costume and another guy dressed in a hot pink gorilla costume.