You go, Sweaty Girl

By Liz, Founder of b∙long

I am a true believer that people come into your life for a reason, not by chance. Sometimes you see the reason in real time. Sometimes you only see it looking back. And sometimes it’;s just an experience you carry with you.

Some people are lifers. Some are a ten-minute conversation. Both matter more than we give them credit for.

I was reminded of that the other day when one of the shortest encounters of my life came back to me. I told the story to a girlfriend later, and somewhere in the telling I realized just how much that tiny bit of time has meant to me.

Here’s the scene.

I had talked my sweet, equally crazy husband into a fundraiser. We were going to run the length of Washington state, border to border, 200 miles in four days, to raise money to build eight clean water wells in Africa. We’d trade off every five miles. One of us ran, the other rode a bike alongside towing everything we needed for the four-day journey.

Everything went according to plan until day two. My husband, who is legitimately the toughest human on the face of the earth and will run

through any kind of pain, broke his leg. A stress fracture, one mile into his first section of the day. We were 58 miles from home, where we’d planned to sleep that night before pushing on to the northern border. The news was scheduled to interview us. The money had already been raised.

We sat on the side of the road somewhere in southern Washington and cried.

Quitting was not an option. I had to at least give it a go. Fifty miles was the most I had ever done in a day. What’s eight more at that point?

So we made a pact. Nick would ride the bike, broken leg and all. How he did that I still don’t know. And I would hoof it home. We charted the most direct route, which meant I spent the next ten hours on a highway shoulder with semi trucks flying past and not much in the way of scenery.

At noon I was sitting in a McDonalds drinking my fourth milkshake of the day, contemplating the rest of the journey. It occurred to me to call one of my best friends and running partners to see if he could meet me and cover some miles later that afternoon. He answered on the first ring and asked no questions except where and when. We picked a new parking garage near the airport, about ten miles from home. I wasn’t exactly sure where it was, but four hours later I found myself closing in on it.

So picture this. I had roughly 50 miles under my belt, most of it on a busy highway. I was filthy. I was wearing several types of coffee drink, a few Gus, and four or five layers of dried sweat. I came to an intersection and was hell-bent on not going one single foot in the wrong direction. And there was a tiny little lady standing next to me, all her belongings in a grocery cart.

I turned and asked her for the absolute shortest route to the new garage. She gave me the couple of turns I needed, clear as day. I turned to look at her sweet face and thank her, and she took my hands in hers, looked me

straight in the eyes, and with a toothless grin said the words I will never forget.

“You go, sweaty girl.”

It still brings tears to my eyes writing this ten years later. I can picture the exact corner. How I felt. How it smelled. Everything.

That tiny exchange lifted me. It gave me the strength and courage to finish that day, and then, with the help of the most random cast of characters and friends who ran farther than they ever thought they could, to finish the whole thing. Border to border was a wrap. The wells got built. And when the pictures came back of the kids in those villages who now had clean

water, I said a quiet thank-you to my little angel on the corner.

You never know who you’re going to be for someone. You might be their lifer. You might be their ten minutes. She was mine, and she had no idea.

So the next time you’re holding that last plank, or trying not to hate the carriage lunge, offer yourself the little whisper she gave me.

You go, sweaty girl.