The Nerd 5K

I know there are a lot of self-proclaimed nerds in the world, people who think they're nerdy. There's Tania of What Would a Nerd Wear. She's in grad school, sure, but only take one look at her and you KNOW she's not really a nerd. She's never written in Klingon once on her blog! There's John Green and the Nerd Fighters. I love his novel Looking For Alaska and I really like his vlog, but is someone that popular a nerd? Maybe.

But no one as a big a nerd as:

WHO HAS ONE FINGER AND A GRAINY WEBCAM PHOTO? A NERD!

Listen, I'm a librarian. I like cardigans a lot. I've published articles in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Information. I have zero hand-eye coordination and wouldn't be able to play a team sport if my life depended on it. I corrected my son's preschool teacher when she told someone the atomic weight of Helium was 1. (SO WRONG!)

I'm married to a software engineer who types in DVORAK and just the other day was too tired because he stayed up late watching NOVA episodes on PBS. I would set off every single Nerd Alarm there is.

And while nerds are awesome and chugging Mountain Dew and making Star Wars jokes will definitely lead to world domination, we might be kind of, sort of unhealthy. I don't want to be unhealthy. I want to stick around for a long time to enjoy my world domination.

I want to run. I used to run. But you know what? Whenever I read about people running on the Internet, like her and her and her, I thought, "Hmm, I'm not sure. They're definitely not nerds. Can nerds run?" And I talked myself out of it. Because nerds lack muscle tone and look bad in running tights and nerds don't race. Nerds don't run.

See, I'm afraid my uncoordinated running down a sidewalk would scare passersby. I'm so socially awkward that I'm afraid to enter a 5K race. Are you like this too? (Please say yes. Nerds are fragile and very emotional.) Would you like to start running and have absolutely no one judge you?

I'm not talking to the people who run a seven minute mile. NO, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED. I'm talking about wheezing, ran for a minute and didn't die, breathing in an inhaler kind of updates, ok? I'm talking to the physical Darwinian FAILS out there, not to people who are already fit. So bring out your allergy medicine, your nebulizers, and your sweatbands and join me.

Here is my plan: we nerds all train for a 5K together, and at the end of the summer, say, Saturday, August 13th, we run a 5K. A Nerd 5K. This means: you don't have to pay a race fee, or show up with a bunch of non-nerds and make small talk at a race. You don't have to even RUN the 5K. You could walk it. You could jog while thinking up nerdy rhymes. You could wear a t-shirt that says, "I'm faster than a Tauntaun," and all of us fellow nerds will laugh, because that's an awesome joke.

And I'll post progress and post a link to your progress in training on your blog or twitter or Facebook or what have you.

AND AND AND: for every nerd I get to run with me, I will donate $5 to my favorite farmy organization: Heifer International, up to $1000 of my own money.

Together we're going to RUN. SLOWLY. So watch out!

(Update: FAQ here. If you have more questions, ask them!)