I RAN A HALF-MARATHON!
As I drove down to Savannah, one of my biggest fears was realizing that I hadn’t kept up with this blog and that I would come home with a big fat DNF to report on my first post back. I don’t know why it bothered me more than the impending pain, the disappointed look from my mother (who ran it with me), my aunt (who also ran it with me) making fun of me for the rest of the weekend, the idea of telling my boyfriend (who has come to expect me to stop following through with my hare brained schemes… because I rarely do), or making the walk of shame out of the race in onto a side street curb to cry my eyes out… Nope! I was fixated on the thought of writing about how big of a loser I was.
BUT I WASN’T A LOSER!
*Does victory run Muhammad Ali style!*
I FINISSHHHEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!! AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
This is kind of a big deal for me. I know people say it’s a big deal anyways but I’m kind of a pro at saying I’m going to do things and then never following through. (See first post.) It’s a huge problem and it’s one of the major sources of discontent in my life. I just lack the motivation to get up and do something about it! It’s awful! This whole half-marathon thing is not really an exception either. I tried really hard to train. I was doing so good up until early October too! I was running on Tuesdays and Thursdays and cross training on Mondays and Wednesdays and even though that’s not exactly the ideal work out schedule for a week it was more than I had ever done and I was seeing a major difference. People were telling me that I looked great, that I looked healthy, that they were proud of me for getting in the gym and making an effort… It was awesome and I LOVED it.
Then life got in the way in the form of school, work, and a major move of house… a “fixer upper” house which dominated my non-school or work hours.
I stopped running. I stopped going to pilates, yoga, and barre classes. I stopped doing active things in general. I wasn’t even eating well because the new house had no oven, fridge, microwave… anything! So we were eating fast food or restaurant food every single night. I gained all my weight back within two weeks. I SHOULD have made time, but the time I had available during the day was crash time. I was in bed by 9 most night because I was just exhausted… exhausted and miserable.
“There’s no way I can finish now,” I told myself.
People who knew I was signed up for a half started telling me that I should start thinking about selling my number because I was probably going to do more damage to myself than was worth it. I googled the crap out of search tags like “How to run a half marathon with no training.” None of those google searches yielded anything positive. Most people’s definition of not training were something along the lines of “I’ve only ever been able to run 8 miles.” I hadn’t even WALKED 8 miles in one go at that point. I was calling mom all the time and saying things like “will you be mad if I don’t finish?” or “what happens if we can’t finish in 4 hours?” or “You know it’s ok if you and Aunt Robin want to leave me behind…” She always answered with “It will be okay!” But her voice indicated that she was worried and maybe a little disappointed that I hadn’t taken this seriously.
I finally decided that I just needed to go ahead and at least try because f*ck it, why not? I had already paid and my aunt was flying down from Michigan. Both she and my mom had only signed up to do this with me because I had asked them to. They had both ran a half-marathon three weeks before and were still in recovery mode but they were both still willing and ready. If nothing else I would spend a weekend with my family and that was reason enough to make the 5 hour drive down to Savannah.
I arrived just in time for us to meet up with my mom and my aunt and take the ferry over to the Expo. Like every race-packet-pick-up-location I’ve ever done, it was a mad house. After getting all of our swag we wandered around and got some free stuff and had a good time. We went out to eat after that even though I was A. genuinely exhausted and B. freaking out that I wasn’t going to get in bed early enough for our 4 am wake up call.
I didn’t get enough sleep. None of us did. The parking garage pass stated that it would close at 5:30 whether we were parked or not and “not to cut it close.” We got there right around 5 and we brought pillows and blankets to try to sleep a little more in the car. I did. Mom and Auntie talked the whole time and ate bananas. lol.
With a start time of 7:00 for the first corral we had plenty of time to wander down to the end of Bay Street. We were supposed to be in the 19th corral. We ended up wandering up to the 17th because we were cold and ready to get started! My aunt actually fell right before we started walking with the group to the start line. She fell HARD too. She ended up cutting her knee and one of her hands pretty good. It wasn’t the best start to her day. 😦
Mom said we had to run to the bridge when we crossed the starting line. The bridge was maybe a half mile away but once we started running it seemed like it was 10 miles away. When we finally slowed down to a walk I gave my mom a look of “there’s no way.” She laughed and said we’d take it as slow as I needed to but that we needed to try to run as much as we could for the first 3 miles. “Those are the hardest!”
They weren’t the hardest but they were among the longest. It seemed like it took an hour to get to the first mile marker when it really only took about 14 minutes. We passed so many walkers in the first mile that I started to feel a lot more comfortable. I’m not the only slow poke! Hooray!
We spent the race doing a sort of walk/jog with much more walking than jogging. We averaged a 14.28 minute mile. Considering I could barely maintain an 18 minute mile for a whole mile when I first starting trying to train… this is a pretty big improvement even if it’s a snails pace for most runners.
Overall, I was sore. I started hurting really bad around mile 9. My hips and back were dying to stop moving and it felt like a blister was forming on one of my feet. (The blister ended up being a wood chip that had gotten into my shoe… ouch.) But when you’re in the midst of things it’s so hard to focus on the pain. Really and truly, I didn’t expect distraction and positive encouragement from my family and other runners to make as big of a difference as it did. We talked with other slow pokes and high-fived spectators. Mom got me on the kick of yelling good morning and thank you to the spectators because they really do help keep you going when you want to quit. One time I stopped to catch my breath and a man sitting on the sidewalk yelled “Hey long legs! Keep on truckin! You can do it!” and it genuinely felt like it took less time to regain my breath (I’m asthmatic btw) than it had been taking earlier on. People will tell you their stories along the way too if you stick with them. We met an awesome lady who was easily in her early 70s who overheard me and my aunt say that we didn’t think we could even walk a marathon if we tried. She hobbled up and said “Girls, I walked my first marathon in less than 6 hours when I turned 60 and I’ve done 3 more since! Never say never!” We ended up sticking with her to heard about her journey and it was awesome.
I think it was about mile 9 when I started getting anxious for mile markers and water stations. I knew I was hurting and I was worried about our time. (I wasnt worrying about our time until I realized we had the potential to beat 3 hours… when I realized it was 100% doable I really wanted to focus on getting the shortest time possible.) I got a few resurgences in strength during the last three miles but by the time we hit 13 I was sent. People who had their medals and were walking back to their cars were shouting “one more turn and you’re done!” and “FINISH STRONG!” “Finish strong” were actually the only words I heard during our final jog to the finish line. Everyone was shouting it like there wasn’t anything else that could be said at that point in the race. Well I tried to finish long but it was the hardest .1 mile stretch I’ve ever tried to jog. My body was telling me it was done and that I needed to stop but my brain was telling my body to stfu.
My mom had us all hold hands when we crossed the finish line. I didn’t even complain about it being super cliche. I did it and it felt great.
We finished in 3:09:28.
I’m so proud of that time even though it’s a joke to so many people who do this all the time. People were finishing their marathons at the same time we were finishing our half and they looked like they could do another one. I looked like death.
I perked right back up when I saw all the post-race refreshments and saw the free beer tent though! We sat and ate our snacks and drank our free beers and, although I felt sore, I no longer felt tired. I felt like I was ready to walk around all of downtown and show off my medal.
We walked down to Broughton St. to have another beer at World of Beer. Savannah was teeming with medal bedazzled men and women who were all constantly spouting off “congratulations!” and “you did it!” My favorite post race conversation was with one man who was trying to break the world record for most official marathons run in one year. Follow him on fabo at marathonmanworld… he’s a cool dude. I hope he meets his goal!
After our beer we decided it was nap time and we hobbled back to the car and made our way home. None of us ever got a nap in the end because dad offered to buy me new glasses (I’d stepped on mine that morning in the dark while I was trying to get dressed) and you can’t turn an offer like that down when you’re a poor college kid like me. We went straight to a huge japanese dinner and feasted like kings with our medals on. I slept so good that night. 🙂
The next day I maybe ate 10 motrin extra strengths because I was HURTING. Bad. Everything was sore. Everything. But it was a good sore. I kept pulling out my medal and telling myself I would have done it all over again. I resolved to do another one in 2014. Maybe even 2!
If I can make it in 3:09 without training I can’t even image what I’m capable of if I actually run every once in a while. I don’t know if I’ll be any more successful in my training goals than I was this past time but I have one thing on my side: experience.
I know how it feels to go 13.1 miles in under 4 hours and I know how fun the whole atmosphere can be. I know that it’s okay to be slow and it’s okay to be scared because there are so many other people there with you that are in the exact same boat. I also know that I, the most lazy person ever, can set a goal and finish… even if it’s not with all the pomp and circumstance I had wanted in the beginning. I know that I, Sara Lynn Wright, can finish a half marathon and have a great time doing it. That knowledge alone makes my future venture into the world of running seem a lot brighter than it did a week ago. 🙂
Lesson learned: I can do anything.
This Princess Wants to Run! 