Kitty Purry: The Recap

A couple of months ago, I made a deal with the internet.

“Internet,” I said, “help me raise more money for the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth and I promise to do silly things for your amusement. In fact, if you help me to raise at least $2000, I will run the last mile of the half marathon in a Katy Perry costume and giant cat head. We shall call it Kitty Purry, and we will all get a good laugh while helping the children.”

The internet, it would seem, loves nothing more than cats and laughter.

And, thus, I was Kitty Purry.

The logistics of driving up to the race as a family didn’t really work out (our pets, they need so many pills). So, I ended up taking the bus by myself. And then my sister proceeded to spend the entire weekend making me feel like a rockstar.

(Yay!)

Because I raised over a thousand dollars last year, we got an invitation to a reception the night before. They did a great job of honoring sponsors, volunteers, fundraisers, etc, while still reminding everyone about why we were there. My sister and I both left feeling incredibly inspired. Sorry, Facebook friends and Twitter followers, but I think we’re going to do this all again next year.

(Now I just need to come up with a crazy costume idea that’s equally amusing, but maybe just a smidgen more aerodynamic.)

Sunday morning was race day. It was also snowing. Because, who doesn’t love to run in the snow?

(Me. I do not love to run in the snow.)

I thought I trained better for this one, but apparently I trained 2 minutes slower.

(Those hills! Those hills!)

My sister did her best to motivate me up the worst of the hills (at one point she resorted to yelling “wheeee!” and throwing leaves on me), but I was… not speedy. Things that make me feel better about this.

1. I raised even more money than I did last year. I will take more money for sick kids over a faster time any day.
2. I might have been slower, but I was definitely steadier. Last year, there were a few times when I was legitimately not sure if I was going to finish. This time, I knew I had it in me. I did some walking on the last two hills, but otherwise I ran the entire thing.
3. Also, that cat head really did slow me down.

My sister ran the last mile with me (dressed up like #leftshark), and I’m so glad she agreed to. Because, otherwise I probably would have tripped and seriously injured myself. I knew going into this that it would be hard to see out of the head (there’s a little window that you can look through, but it’s encased in styrofoam, creating literal tunnel vision), but I hadn’t factored in the bounce factor. As in, the head was bouncing around and my little tunnel basically just gave me strobe vision. But my sister held my hand and she made sure I didn’t fall.

We rounded a corner and the finish line was in sight (well, not my sight). All of a sudden, I heard the announcer say “is that… is that a giant cat head?!?! it is a giant cat head! go cat head, go!”

(I’m more than just a head, people.)

My sister turned to me and said, “everyone is staring at us now.” So, of course, that’s when my grass skirt fell off. So, I leaned over to pick it up… and dropped the cat head.

(If I’m going to run in a ridiculous costume, I’d like to do it with some goddamn dignity.)

(This probably added seconds to my race time.)

I got myself sorted out, we ran in, and I managed to cross the finish line without tripping over the timing mat. Mission accomplished!

I’m not going to lie, it was an emotional weekend for me. Last year, most of what CHaD does was a bit of an abstraction to me. This year, because we had been to the reception the night before and met some of the CHaD kids and their parents, it was all a lot more real. Ahead of me on the course, I saw a couple of the moms that had spoken the night before. One of them had a good outcome, one of them didn’t. But they were both clearly having a very intense experience. I ran the same miles as them, but not in their shoes. I can only begin to imagine what it’s been like. I’m so glad that there are places like CHaD, where children and their parents are truly loved and cared for.

It was an incredibly humbling and inspiring weekend, one that both made me realize just how fortunate I’ve been in my life, but that also pushed me to want to help out however I can. I’m already dreaming up ways that I can embarrass myself next year. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

At the reception, I met the girl who was one of the stars of the CHaD Roar video. She’s a young adult now, doing well, and getting cutting edge treatment for her cystic fibrosis. I told her how much she had inspired me (I did the run last year in good part because I saw the video and wanted to help out). She thought my Kitty Purry costume was pretty funny. I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this, except that sometimes it’s really nice to know that things turned out ok.

If you’d still like to make a donation, you can do that here.