Beating the Blerch

About a week ago, I beat the Blerch and boy was it glorious. If you haven’t heard of the Blerch, you may be scratching your head wondering “What on earth is she talking about?” Well, according to the Oatmeal’s comics, the Blerch represents all forms of gluttony, apathy, and indifference that plagues one’s life. It also happens to be in the form of a fat little cherub who follows people when they run. If you haven’t read this comic, please do. It’s hilarious.

So anyway, this comic inspired the Oatmeal to create the “Beat the Blerch” 5k, 10k, half, and full marathon. 🙂 It’s been on my bucket list for years and two weekends ago, I crossed it off my list by doing the half. Hooray! Here’s how the race went down.

The race is in Carnation, WA, about an hour or so away from Seattle. The race started at 9:30 am so my friend and I leisurely made out way out with a half hour to spare. From start to finish, there were so many things that made us smile.

In the waiting area, there was a burritoughnut station where you got a tortilla, a donut, and a lot of toppings (chips and sweets) to put into your burritoughnut. LOL. I had to pass as I did not trust myself to not throw up mid race. 🙂

At the start line, they were volunteers throwing out candy and I kid you not, they opened up a bag of chips and started tossing them out. LOL. After crossing the start line, turmoil ensued. The race announcer had mentioned that rights were our friend and that on the course, we were to turn right. She either failed to mention that the first turn was a left or none of us were listening. I actually think it was possibly the latter. We were a chatty bunch. 🙂

Soooo, as my friend and I are turning right at the first intersection and running along the path, we see about a hundred runners coming back at us and there was just utter confusion. We tried turning onto a different path onto a bridge that definitely was not meant to support 30 people running on it. And after running a bit, someone said “Hey, umm no one is behind us.” LOL. So we immediately back tracked until we saw a volunteer to set us on the right path. They even told us that if we wanted to restart, we could head to the start and they could reset our timers, but I wasn’t running this for time so we just headed off to catch up with the other runners.

The course was beautiful – full of nature (trees and things). It was warm, but the trees shaded us and there was a nice consistent breeze. We even saw some chickens along the route. Then, there were the aid stations. Oh the aid stations were the best. Each aid station had a Blerch…chilling on a couch, with cake and nutella sandwiches. Each Blerch we encountered was great. They kept telling us to slow down and to have a nice sit-down. LOL. I couldn’t stop laughing as I passed them.

The finish line also had a Blerch that gave us high fives as we headed in. That Blerch also chased some people in so they had some awesome photos of them beating the Blerch to the finish line. 🙂 OH and the photos were free. What more could I ask for? I got Matthew Inman to sign my ribbon.

If you’ve never run this half before, I highly recommend it. 🙂

Question for you: Have you ever run for food? LOL. I have. It’s the story of my life.