Sara

Through my bootcamp class I've met lots of great people. People that I would never have met nor thought I had anything in common with and yet now I consider them my friends. One of those people is Sara. Sara is unlike anyone I have ever met. She is almost always in a good mood, but not in a good mood that makes you want to hit her. She seems to be genuinely happy most of the time. I realize this is not the case in reality, but I'm impressed she seems that way much of the time. Sara is also one of the only people that can multi task better than I can and never seems intimidated by an outing or adventure. She has two kids, one 4 and one is 1st grade and she is always going somewhere fun with them. She works too. She does bootcamp (and extra training runs). She used to be in the Cal Band and now plays trombone in a band called California Repercussions (or something like that.) She seems to know everyone in a way that seems almost impossible. She has mom friends, band friends, bootcamp friends, preschool friends, alameda friends, family friends, work friends, cal friends, and I'm sure many other categories of friends that I don't even know about. And she sincerely seems to care about all of them. I can barely care about my family, but she keeps tabs on what seems like hundreds of people at at time.

I like Sara for many reasons not limited to her sense of humor, ability to roll with the punches, while still being very much a control freak, the fact that she is always trying new recipes all the time without a worry about the outcome, her attitude towards fitness, and how fast (or not fast) she runs. She and I are very equally matched in pace. She generally out runs me on hills (I hate hills), but in long runs without hills, we can stay together nicely chatting about kids, parenting techniques, schools, teachers or gossiping about other bootcampers.

She's been doing these trail runs lately as she is training for her next race (she is always doing something race-wise) and as much as I hate trail running (too many hills!) I feel compelled to run with her so I've done a couple. Today was one. Just over 6 1/2 miles of pure up and down, heavy on the up. And heavy on the mud. My shoes were so full of mud at some point, my shoe was actually coming off. But there was Sara right in front of me, happily trudging up the mountain admiring the views of Mt Tam and Mt Diablo and asking me "how lucky are we?" Ok, maybe I did want to hit her a couple times today. But then we were done and enjoyed a lovely coffee and pastry sitting on a bus bench in the sun, watching the strange berkeley people go by.

I'm very glad I've met all my bootcamp pals, but I think I'm most happy about meeting and becoming friends with Sara.