French Press.  Coffee.  Get it?

Okay, maybe it’s a stretch.  We’ll just pretend we didn’t mention it, okay?

The first of this month (April) I received an email that made me sit down hard.  It started out with:

“I’m with WJTV 12 News and for the month of April we are doing something called ‘Focused on Fitness.’….We were hoping the Mississippi Coffee Runners could join us one of the mornings in April!”

Holy Cow!!!

After a lot of emails and a few phone calls, it was arranged that myself and some of the #MScoffeerunners would head over to the WJTV headquarters the morning of April 15 for a live, in studio interview.  How exciting!!!

The #MScoffeerunners is the most amazing group ever!  There are so many incredible people with inspiring stories!!!  People who defy the odds of the statistics the press likes to present as the status quo of the “typical” Mississippian. They are warriors!  They are victors!  They are awesome and they are my friends!

Now, many of you know we have some severe weather over the weekend.  It was pretty rough.  Lots of tornadoes, property damage and one fatality.  It was very sad.

At our house, my #PetitePooch, Tess, made it impossible for us to get any rest.  She gets very worked up over storms and she was a Nervous Nellie during the evening when the storms were raging.

We spent a long time in our bedroom closet when the tornadoes were close enough that we felt we should probably take shelter.

The weekend wrapped up with one well rested puppy and two sleep deprived adults.

The original plan for this interview was for me to drive down at early o’clock Monday morning, (2:00am) to be in Jackson, Mississippi in time for the 5:45 arrival time that had been requested for us to be there before the interview.

After 2 nights of storms and little sleep, MFH (My Favorite Husband) and I decided I would drive down Sunday afternoon and hotel it.  Normally when I travel solo, I talk on the phone with different people to keep myself awake.  NOBODY was going to want to talk to me at 2:00am to keep me awake.  I mean, my family loves me and everything but that’s asking a tad too much!  Better to hotel it and skip the early o’clock miles.

I made reservations at the Marriott in downtown Jackson.  I’ve stayed there many times when either running the Mississippi Blues Marathon or volunteering at the race.  I was familiar with the hotel and the area.  It was about a 15 minute drive from the studio.  Perfect!

Long story short, I slept awful.  I kept waking up to look at my clock every hour to make sure I hadn’t overslept my alarm.  Finally, 4:15am and my alarm went off.  I toddled to the bathroom and started the tub to warm the water before my shower.

No. Hot. Water.

Okay, Howard.  A chilly shower would be  brisk and invigorating! I psyched myself up for a cold shower and went to pull up the little knob thingy (technical term, thingy).  It wouldn’t pull up!  I tried and tried and tried.

Nothing doing.  The shower was broken.

The silver lining to this story is the water in the sink was toasty warm and I had a nice sponge bath in the sink and then washed my hair in the sink before getting  dressed and driving it to the TV station.

Perfect!

As I pulled into the parking area, I saw others from the #MScoffeerunners already there.  We had Reserved Parking!  *at least that’s what I’m calling it*

Soon a lady arrived to let us in through the parking security gate and walked us through the halls towards the studio.

I was soooo nervous!!!

They had us wait in a skinny little hallway until they were ready to “arrange” how we were going to stand during the interview.

My mouth was blabbering a zillion miles an hour.  Fortunately, most everybody had met me before and let it roll.

It was serious panic time when they hooked me up with a mike and nobody else got one.  WAIT~~~wasn’t everybody else getting one!?!

Nope.  They were interviewing me.  I was a sad panda about this. Everybody there representing the #MScoffeerunners had amazing stories to share. I was hoping the world would learn of all their awesomeness!

Soon they herded all of us into the studio and kind of arranged us around the anchor’s desk.  I was kind of hoping we’d be sitting?  I had told one person in our group that if I started babbling (and if you’ve ever met me IRL, you know I’m a pro at babbling!) he was supposed to kick me under the table to get me to shut up.  No such luck.  No table.  I think he was relieved?  LOL!!!

We all had our assigned standing spots when the people in charge said, “Wait.  She needs a box to make her look taller.”

I died a small death inside.  I thought that maybe at 57 years old I had made it past the stage in life where people would try to make me look taller than I am?  Nope! I had to do the interview standing on a box. Too funny!!!  #ShortPersonProblems

As we were preparing to go on air, they told me to look at camera #1.  I’m like, “Okay.”

Ask me if I looked at Camera #1?

Nope.

Not once.

Oops!

I’m guessing I do not have a career in television?

They asked questions.  I stammered through answers and we lived to tell the tale.

I’m telling you, Kiwanis last Wednesday and TV today.  This is waaaaayyy out of my league, y’all!!!

It was exciting to tell everyone about all the amazing people in the #MScoffeerunners!  These people train hard.  They work hard and race hard.  They’re the best of the best and I’m honored to know them!

Huge KUDOS to these wonderful people!!!

Here’s the link to the interview.  It’s about 5 minutes, tops.

 

#IRun4Aiden