ROUGIE'S BIG RACE

My wife and I met our daughter Rougie in the Charleston, SC airport on Thursday. Rougie is not the name we gave her at birth. We picked Sarah. But Sarah moved from a high rise in New York to a farm in the South three years ago, bought some goats, fell in love with NASCAR, started blogging as Country Girl, then evolved to Rougeneck, which I’m guessing is the fashionista version of Redneck.

Intimates call her Rougie.

First thing she said to me when we met at the airport was, “don’t talk to me, don’t come near me, I’m in a foul mood and could get violent or start weeping uncontrollably if you do so much as look at me the wrong way.”

Only she didn’t actually say it like that. She used the international three-letter code that means the same thing.

PMS.

She was, as she likes to put it, stabby.

Better I guess, than AK-47y.

Destination for the weekend: Kiawah Island, SC, for the big half marathon, Rougie’s first ever. It’s a 13.1 mile run, which apparently isn’t enough for some people. They also have the 26.2 version at the same time for runners who are twice as crazy.

Personally, I think 13.1 miles is more than enough to test anyone’s endurance, whether you’re running or driving on the Long Island Expressway on a Friday night in the summer.

Kiawah Island is a place I had never heard of, but will now happily recommend to anyone who is not facing college tuition or foreclosure. We stayed at The Sanctuary, a family-friendly, four-star resort and home of the marathon. Rougie was there to run. My wife was there to keep repeating those four words our daughter wanted to hear. You can do it.

I only had two words. Check, please.

There are many excellent restaurants on the island, and we spent the next two days stuffing our faces in six of them. Technically Rougie was carb loading. I was face stuffing.

Rougie is addicted to Twitter, and she wanted other Twits to follow her every inch of the 13.1 miles. But since it’s almost impossible to run and tweet at the same time, I was elected designated Tweeter. Of course, it’s also impossible to give updates unless you’re in a chase car, so I was more Cheater than Tweeter — I just made stuff up. You Twitter Critters can find my fictional account of the race at #runrougierun.

Rougie had only taken up running in April. She began training for the half marathon in July. She trained with a passion, and eventually, this race took on a new meaning, a new purpose. This was no longer a 13.1 mile jaunt in expensive footgear. This was a mountain to climb. This was a life goal. So it was an intensely emotional moment when she finally crossed the starting line at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning, in the middle of a sea of 3,000 other determined souls.

My wife and I cheered. We learned later that Sarah cried.

She had never run 13 miles, so her goal was to just finish the race. But her dream was to finish it in under two hours.

She clocked in at 1:59:48. Dog tired, with 11 seconds to spare.

For the first ten minutes after she crossed the finish line, we lost track of her. Hey, it was a melee. And then we found her, sitting on the wet grass, wrapped in Mylar, sipping a beer.

There were lots of hugs and congratulations, and Sarah told us how proud she was of herself for finishing.

My wife and I are proud of her too. Only we have a different perspective. We think our daughter is only just beginning.

Run, Rougie, run.

UPDATE: Read Sarah's account of the race here.

Marshall posted on December 14, 2009 4:42 PM