AA
Well, haters, I did it. And by "haters" I mean at least 98% of you punks. I ran the fourth annual Soldier Field 10 Mile run, which means that all 175 muscular pounds of me [cough, cough] and my poor lil feet ran a complete 52,800 feet last Saturday morning at 7:30 am (mashaAllah).
How it started...
A couple months ago or so, Taha had forwarded me a link (www.soldierfield10.com) that called for people to participate in a ten mile run in honor of our veterans of These United States of America. Within five minutes of receiving the link, I had signed up for the 10 mile run. I was totally mesmerized and motivated to sign up because of the opportunity and dream to finish on the 50 yard line of the historic and beautiful Soldier Field where all the Bears Greats have played, so I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that I was going to be in the "presence of" legends like Butkus, Ditka, Halas, Luckman, Sweetness, Sayers, Singletary, Hampton, Urlacher. The list goes on, mashaAllah and inshaAllah.
So, after signing up, I was pretty excited and told everyone I knew that I had signed up for a 10 mile run. People were impressed. "Wow, Imran! That's awesome!" It felt great hearing that. Before I had even begun thinking about my training program, I was already receiving accolades of my coolness and sheer bravery. After telling people about the run for a good week or so and finally getting over the hype of me doing something like this, I finally decided to actually train.
And train I did. The feeling was phenomenal. I was getting back into shape! This was going to be the spark in my life to send me back to sophomore year of DePaul - the peak and glory of my physical self. The days where running at least 5 miles/day were all part of the daily SOPs(standard operating procedures). I was on Cloud 9 and felt like screaming in the gym, "I BELIEVE I CAN FLYYY! I BELIEVE I CAN TOUCH THE SKYYY! I THINK ABOUT IT EVERY NIGHT AND DAY, SPREAD MY WINGS AND FLY AWAY............YOU REMIND ME OF MY JEEP! I WANNA RIDE IT!............CAN WE GO HALF ON A BABY............I DON'T SEE NOTHIN' WRONG WITH A LIL BUMP AND GRIND............"
(Okay, apologies, people. Once I get started on R. Kelly, it's hard for me stop...)
So, my first week of running was intense albeit challenging. My second week of running, however, was much easier and that's namely because I didn't do much running. You see, for a good solid week I ran. And then I stopped for a few days. And then I ran for a couple more days. And then I stopped again. I started to find out that the new Modern Day Imran was at odds with returning to Sophomore Year Imran (indulge me here for a few, will ya?). It was like I was Anaikan Skywalker struggling between the Dark Side (= Modern Day Imran) and the Jedi way of life (= Soph Yr Imran). The eternal battle of good versus evil; zabiha versus non-zabiha; marrying a hijabi versus marrying a non-hijabi waged inside of me. It erupted like Mount Vesuvius did on Pompeii. Like Urlacher fighting his own shadow. Like Umar overcoming his nerdiness. Like Ali fighting his fob-like tendencies. This, folks, was serious and emotionally draining on me.
At this point, enter Devon Avenue and dinner with friends at Khan BBQ. As always, I became the center of attention. No, not because everyone loves me, but because everyone loves making me the butt of all jokes. It's a crown I wear proudly much like Miss Japan wearing the Miss Universe crown. Sigh. She hot...
Anyways...
So naturally my boys ask me about my training progress. I conceal the truth of my inner jihad and tell them that it's going okay, but that I should probably step it up because at that point in time I had just over a month left for training and the most I ran was 3 miles. They then proceeded to make fun of me for having dinner instead of working out. This then was followed-up with jeering remarks like, "You've only done one 3 mile run so far?! You're screwed!" And so the "LOLs" soon followed. After they estimated what my mile time was averaging, they all started to burst out in tears laughing at this bechara masoom bacha.
Chief among the crowd was Sami Haque laughing along. But after a while, he sensed that despite me laughing all the jokes off, I was growing insecure on the inside. Holy fricken crap, I thought to myself. What if these mofos are right? What if I can't do this? I can't bring myself to run 10 miles with relative ease in less than a month! So, using his Spidey senses, Sami stepped up to bat for me. "No, guys. My man Pac can do this."
The crowd (or mob, rather) fell silent.
"Yeah, Pac can totally do this. You'll see. He's going to step up his training, lose weight, and then he's going to post pictures of himself on Facebook and girls are going to look at his profile pic and be like, 'What! What!' And then some hot desi chick will write him emails that are 3 pages long and love his blog. All because of this run."
Never more did I ever respect and admire a man for doing what any good person (you hear that, Hassan, Taha, and Sayeed?!) would do: defend their brother.
The silence was deafening. But Sayeed was not going to let me have this moment. For it would not be Sayeed if he did not let me have JUST ONE FRICKING HAPPY MOMENT in my life (sorry, had to get that off my chest...). Sayeed looks over to me in a very suspect way and asks, "Okay, so how much time do you have considering you're running at this point practically a 15 min mile average?"
I answered, "About 3 hours."
The giggling that ensued once again busted out in uncontrollable laughter. Hassan was hysterical and got up out of his chair to bring re-focus himself. I smiled and laughed, but my eyes looked over to the only person I cared about at that moment: Sami. He would support me. He wouldn't let these laughing hyneas feed on me anymore. I look over. Our eyes connected. Sami's lips move...his mouth opens...he pauses...looks at everyone...looks back at me...and then he closes his mouth and begins slowly shaking his head. His eyes said everything. Pac, I tried, man, I tried. But you're just too damn fat to do this in that time. I can't help you...
I was disheveled. Distraught. Disgruntled. Disappointed. Dissed.
But I continued laughing and was still defiant. "I can do this, punks!"
One of the guys then suggests that we place some sort of bet on this. Enter Taha (and his nose).
"Dude, we need to think of something. Alright, we're here at Devon and we somehow gotta include it in the bet..."
"I got it," T says enthusiastically. "Since you're so confident that you'll do this, if you don't, you have to walk up and down Devon...without a shirt."
"Ooooooh!" "Daaaaang!!" "LOL!" came the chorus.
"Done and done. But the same has to apply to you. When I finish, YOU will have to walk up and down Devon without a shirt." Taha, after putting this back on him, hesitated. But, with all the pressure on him, he agreed and we shook on it...
At this point, I can easily conclude this epic story by saying, "And the rest, as they say, is history." But...hold on...
I continued training the next two weeks intensely. I even mustered up a 5 mile practice run. I would bring that up the next week to 7, then 8. If I couldn't get to 10, I'd be satisfied with consistent training and running up to 7 or 8 miles. Unfortunately, Modern Day Imran kidnapped Soph Yr Imran and the last two weeks prior to the run was basically lost. Maybe a day of training here and there, but nothing remarkable. I was going to enter the race without proper training and having run half the distance I was expected to...
to be continued
Posts
