Overreacting is in my nature. I’m not much of an underperformer, if you will. I go all the way or go home. So, when I got back to our team area Sunday and heard the words, it wasn’t weird that I was almost paralyzed.

“Sara fell at the starting line and was hurt.”

Wait.

What?

What the fuck did you just say?

I couldn’t really comprehend what I was just told. I had just run the fastest I’ve ever run. The time doesn’t matter. It was more about the feeling. It was unconscious. No national record was ever going to be broken, but for me, for my level and what I can accomplish, it was fantastic. Beyond what I expected. I’d just finished a 13.1-mile race faster than ever before, and now, here I was, standing in our team area getting ready to change and go grab a beer and I hear that my wife was hurt.

Seriously, what the fuck?

I had to take a second to digest everything. She was alright but apparently she had a fall puffy lipnear the beginning of the race. It wasn’t too serious, or at least it seemed it couldn’t have been because she had gotten up, dusted herself off and kept going. But I didn’t know what to do. Do I go out on the course and find her? Am I that guy that just rushes out there and takes charge of the situation? I mean, she is my wife. I do owe it to her to take care of her when she’s hurt, don’t I?

Don’t I?

That’s a tough call I had to make. Spend the energy going out to find her, run to where she is and be the savior, at least in my mind, or maybe, maybe the best play is to just hang and let it play out. That’s not very manly is it? Was she OK? Was she hurt? Was this about me or her? I should go take care of her if she’s hurt. Right? That’s the normal man feeling. She can’t make it on her own, or at least she needs a hand even if she can. Right? That’s what I should feel. Right?

Fuck, I hate being a man sometimes.

I tried to text her. Sent two messages and waited. No response. Minutes ticked by, more people came in from finishing the race and as the clock ticked, more and more of the people she should be finishing with joined our scene. Yet, she wasn’t there. She was still somewhere out there, somewhere hurt. At least that’s what was going on in my head. I couldn’t let it go, could I?

Finally, I had to pull the trigger. I called. I hit speed dial for her number, knowing she wouldn’t be happy I was calling and bothering her if she was running. But what if she was hurt, maybe even laying on the side of the road, helpless? My mind wandered. It needed an answer. Maybe she’d have just enough energy to pick up but all I’d hear is breathing as she lay there helpless. I had all the stupid thoughts.

It was breathing when the ringing stopped. Huffing and puffing. Not like she was helpless though. It was the kind where, instantly, I knew she was powering along, running. “Hey.” That’s all she said when she answered. “Are you alright? What the fuck happened? Do I need to come out there?” My reaction wasn’t all that sensitive but it’s all I could come up with in the moment. “No, I’m fine. Well, I hurt … a lot … but I’m at Mile 10. I’ll be fine.”

WHAT THE FUCKING IS GOING ON HERE?

Seriously, I give up. That’s all I could think.

Now, knowing what happened, it’s the same.

Rewind to a little over 2 hours before. I had passed the starting line for the Shamrock Half Marathon and got off to a great start. I didn’t care about my time but was going to pace a friend in my running group as he tried for a PR, a personal record in case you don’t know the lingo. If we did well, we’d both PR. Looking back, we couldn’t have had a better race. After a mile, he jumped ahead of the race pacers we were following and I remember thinking, “Well, this is a bit fast for us, but fuck it. If he feels like he’s got it today, then let’s fuckin’ ride.” That feeling never changed. We got to Mile 9 and felt great. The pace hadn’t fallen off. A Dolphin selfie coming off Fort Story, the military base the race runs through, was self-prescribed at Mile 10, and we had banked enough time that a quick stop for a beer shot and selfie at Mile 11 became a necessity. From there, we cruised to a big, sweaty hug at the finish line, crushing any time we previously thought possible just 113 minutes before.

This whole time, though, as we ran free, fast and light-hearted, it was without knowing what was going on behind us. That Sugar Mama had fallen less than 200 feet after the starting line. Been tripped when some dumbass chick stopped in front of her without signaling, likely to turn on her music or start an app on her phone. The woman, or as I call her, “BITCH”, never saw what happened behind her, and that’s her loss. Because she missed out on something amazing.

I’ve been around some really powerful women in my life, both personally and professionally. Growing up, I had two mothers. One, my biological mother, who has an unbelievable inner strength which she showed when she allowed someone else to raise me. It was the right thing at the right time, but probably the hardest thing a person can do. And my step mother, she was strong as fuck, too. At 24 she was a step mom and had 3 of her own children. Oh, and she was a widow finding her way through life after my dad died. I did not see eye-to-eye with her, but the youthful power she held then taught me life lessons I am still grateful for today. On top of those two, I also had a cadre of mothers who, even though we weren’t technically related, took me in almost as their own and put even more structure in my life. Mary. Ida. Mickey. Gloria. The list goes on. So many others who counted me not only as their sons’ friend, but treated me as family. As blood. Made me feel as if we were kin.

It didn’t stop there. The run of strong women continued as I got into the real world. I first started working in college athletics when I volunteered at a small school in the middle of no-fucking-where Iowa (two hyphens, please), where they had a female running the Sports Information department for this little Division III school. That, working for a woman in a male-dominated profession, felt as normal to me as did listening to women guiding all my life decisions growing up. Then, my first big-time gig in college athletics came when I was hired by a woman in Nebraska who was literally a trail blazer. Then, later on, my first job as a senior administrator came in an athletic department run by a woman. The only time I really forayed outside of athletics in the PR realm was for a small company that, not so weirdly, was woman-owned with a female CEO.

Listening to and taking direction from women is not a problem for me.

This time, though, I didn’t want to hear it. “I’m fine. I’m running with Tracy and Serena. We’ll be there soon.” That was her response to my call.

Yeah, that didn’t sit well with me. Yet, I quickly understood something: it didn’t matter what I thought or wanted. Sugar Mama was going to Sugar Mama.

There have been tough women in my life, but none can match up with Sugar Mama when it comes to determination and grit. I mean, come on. By the time I saw her, she finishlooked as though she had been through a UFC fight. Puffy nose that looked like it had been bleeding. (Note: it had) Bloody and swollen lip. Possible concussion symptoms. Sore and swollen wrist from where she fell. She just finished 13 point fucking 1 miles running with all of this. After getting tripped and flopping to the ground, she got pulled off to the side and told her friends, Tracy and Serena, to go on. Run their race without her. A nice old couple stayed with her until the paramedics came and checked her out. They said she could still run, but she needed to get going. The sweeper van had just gone by and she needed to catch it. She ran faster that first mile than she’d ever run. And then she kept going. About six miles in she finally caught her friends. They were with her when I called and that was the only reason I didn’t run out on the course and find her. If she had been by herself trying to finish the race after all that, well, I couldn’t handle that. I’d have to go out there myself. Not because I’m a man and need to save her, like some assholio men would feel, but because I would want to be there to see when she gets to the finish line. Since I KNEW she’d get there.

In the end, she did. She crossed the line with her friends and on her terms, that BITCH at the starting line be damned. She subscribes to a saying that goes, “She believed she could, so she did.” My Sugar Mama, she does anything she puts her mind to. And I’m all here for it.

The funny thing is that, while I’ve always known her strong will, it’s amazing how she’s not alone. In fact, she fits perfectly into this woman-dominated running community we’ve joined. These women, wow. Watch out. They’re fucking unreal. Badass is not badass enough of a description to describe them. They’re mothers and professionals, balancing two worlds while trying to have an active lifestyle, which too often is belittled by men. Why do guys think they’re the only ones who can be athletes anyway? These women are amazing specimens. And they’re more mentally tough than 99 percent of the men I’ve known. Hell, they have babies and then run marathons just months later. They take on so much and ask so little, just to have enough time, what little they need to get some peace as they’re out on the road or trail or treadmill. I’ve seen women battle – and beat – cancer while getting out there every week on the road. And women who deal stress, and single-mom issues, and divorce, and health issues, and unsupportive spouses, and so much more.

And yet, they thrive.

They leave me in awe.

usSugar Mama is no different. I knew she was different a long time ago, much like this running tribe we’ve attached to lately, but it was reinforced before the race when I saw she picked the same memorial training bib that I did. Our team offered bibs with quotes that we could run with to support others who are behind us. They had inspirational quotes, and we were supposed to choose one of the 8 or 10 they laid out that resonated with us. When we got home, we realized Sugar Mama and I had chosen the same exact bibs. They said:

Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid. Courage means you don’t let fear stop you.

It’s no wonder she kept going. No fear of injury was great enough to keep her from reaching her goal.

Now that we’re a few days removed from the race, we know she had a minor fracture in her wrist, a possible tooth root issue caused from the fall, and a fat lip. Let me say that again: SHE RAN A FUCKING HALF MARATHON WITH A NEWLY BROKEN WRIST AND DENTED TOOTH.

I mean, seriously, who does that?

In my experience, only a badass woman does that. And I’m glad this one’s mine.