That would be the half for me! This last Saturday my big event finally arrived. All this whining I've been doing about having to run and train was coming to an end. After making my mind up to be "over it", I had a really pleasant couple of days leading up to it. Friday we went out to dinner at Olive Garden to "carb load" and Saturday we were up and headed out by 4 am to catch the bus to the start line. WAY too early for me. Jake, Melanie, Robin and myself all rode together to save parking space and gas. On the way there Melanie realized she forgot her bib which contained her personalized timing chip. We didn't have time to go back and they weren't letting anyone near the start line.
Traffic was awful and thank goodness they prepared for that or we would have missed the bus. Mel had to stay back to get a new chip assigned to her. We got to the start line with just about 30 min to spare. Just enough time to eat a banana, use the restroom and talk to a few friends. I wasn't even nervous!!
The gun sounded and we took off. I run alone so even though we all started at the same place, we were separated almost instantly. I was feeling really good except my arch on my left foot and my hams were already hurting. Not a good sign. My plan was to run every mile and then walk for about 20 seconds. Well, when mile one came up, I couldn't bring myself to walk. I pulled over and walked for a second while I took my jacket off, but it's hard to walk when everyone is passing you by. This happened for the first 4 miles. I was still feeling really good though but did take a few seconds each mile to walk. I made it to mile 8 running full miles with short walking breaks in between. That's way better than I normally do!
I was starting to kind of be excited about maybe getting a decent time. Glade showed up right after mile 8 and was there every couple of miles after that. I hit mile 10 and things started going downhill from there. I was just so tired! By mile 11 I was probably only running maybe two minutes at a time. My toes were cramping so bad and my legs were feeling a little jelly-like. In my mind I could say "only two more miles", but my body didn't care. Finally I came to the last mile and I picked up pace a tiny bit, but I just didn't have it in me. I walked a lot that last two miles, sadly. But I made it to the finish line regardless of my slumpy shuffly state!
My chip time was 2:20, but my Runkeeper time was 2:18. You can count however you like, but I go with the runkeeper. See, I made a poor choice of stopping to use the restroom at mile 6. I didn't NEED to, but I was afraid not to. I will take the penalty for that choice, but I don't think it's fair to penalize me for having to wait for SLOW PEE-ERS. I was in and out in less than a minute, but waited almost 3 just to get in. So when I could see it was going to be a bit, I paused my Runkeeper. BUT, the minute I got out, I started it back up and hit the road. No resting. So with counting for a normal pee stop I got 2:18. My best run was 2:16 so I was pretty happy with that. Not to mention I just felt really good most of the way. That's so much better than running mad, or frustrated or seriously hurting.
I'm so happy to not be pressured to run for awhile. I was tempted to go for a run today, but I really just have too much to do this week. Besides that, I'm just barely being able to walk normally again from being so sore!! I'm planning on taking a run or two on the beach this weekend while in Cali. That's always fun ♥
1 comment:
That's an awesome accomplishment Laurie!! I have never ran that long! Good job!!
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