rainin' on my parade

You know, nearly everytime that I tell someone that I'm running a marathon I get a negative response. I'm ok with comments like, "You're crazy" or "You do realize how tough that is, right?" Yeah, these kind of comments I'm ok with. The ones that bother me are ones like the following (insert colon here, but my keyboard won't type it)

• my sister trained 4 times for a marathon, and each time, she injured herself at about the 21 mile run, so she's never gotten to actually run it. She finally gave up. Good luck.
• people die from those things, you know. Really, they do. There was this one woman...
• just don't be alarmed if you get black toenails. That's pretty common. They'll probably fall off, too. (this one in particular freaks me out to no end. i have dreams of this, and it rivals the dream of my teeth falling out. the soundtrack--black hole sun and paint it black)
• you'll probably get diarrhea at the race. that happens a lot. just be ready for that.
• yeah, so i'm donating to this thing, but what if you can't make it. i mean, is my money wasted? (answer--no, the society still gets the funds i raised; i just have to live with the humiliation of not making it).
• your calves aren't very big. i thought you were in a dance company at one time. you won't make it with calves like that.
• you're probably going to cry through the whole race. they all cry, especially if they don't make it.
• have you ever run before? you don't run. you needed to have trained for years before this.
• oh yeah, I've run that one. That one hill from mile 6-8 elevates to about 250. yeah, that's a bitch. no amount of hill training helps that one.

See, the thing is, my name is Crankykim not Chipperkim, so I'm really adept at coming up with every scenario possible in which I fail at this endeavor, so really, there's no need for you naysayers to add to my obsessive nightmare. It's bad enough that I think about how I've still got 20 more miles to think about at this point and about how the course is pretty hilly, but now i have to worry about my toenails falling off. I at least want pretty feet when I collapse at mile 10.

buggerall.