My First Half Marathon

Pier to Peak….Pier to Peak.

Where do I begin.

To be honest I don’t know where I came up with the idea to to run a half marathon.  Maybe being done with soccer it was a way where I could track my progress and stay on top myself? Who knows.  I was feeling pretty confident in my training leading up to the race.  I could easily complete my ten and eleven mile runs…but then I was traveling quite a bit making it difficult to carve out nearly two hours to workout in an unknown area.  What really hurt me however was getting sick a week away from the race.  Growing up being sick was never an excuse to not perform or compete, so when I first got sick I attempted to run twelve miles.  I didn’t get past five.  I could barely breathe, I had a terrible cough, I just felt like absolute shit.  After that wake up call I kept my ass in bed.

Two days before the race I was feeling MUCH better.  It not only made me feel confident about my race performance but just the overall experience. I was like hell yea, healthy living, healthy life ra ra ra!

That feeling dropped almost immediately when I saw a post on the Facebook event page stating that the race will be  ‘ALL UPHILL’

I promptly tweeted a pg version of my thoughts:

But seriously, it should be on your main page of your website, it should have a warning sign before you complete registration: CAUTION, THE ENTIRE RACE IS UPHILL.  THIS IS NOT A JOKE. IT IS UPHILL. ALL OF IT. NOT SOME OF IT.  ALL OF IT.

Because then I would have either trained differently or you know what, I would have picked a different race for MY VERY FIRST HALF MARATHON.

So ya, I spent my Friday night stressed.  I even went as far as to contemplate even racing….but I had already paid the money and I already told my friends so I couldn’t back out. And I just don’t like to quit so there’s that.

Well Saturday crawled by and suddenly Sunday morning hit me in the face.  I picked up my bib, stretched a bit, went to the bathroom 6 times, stood around some more, went back to the bathroom and finally we were in the five minute mark.

With everyone cheering at the starting line I was beginning to feel a bit of excitement, I felt confident, I was ready.

Well, the first 3 miles were awesome.  We were definitely running uphill but it wasn’t excessive.  It felt like a small burning in my legs, nothing crazy. And then we hit the 4th mile.  the trail went from being manageable to kind of like whoaaa, this is kind of difficult. And by the sixth mile I was probably saying out loud, “What the fuck is this shit!?” So after the seventh mile I was done running.  The remaining 6 miles I had to convince myself to run every half mile. It was torture. It was so bad. Omg just writing about it makes me want to cry.  There were points on the mountain where I would look at the view and just want to turn around and walk down.  When I would see cars driving down hill I seriously wanted to flag them down and ask them to take me back to the pier.  But I didn’t. I sucked it up and finished the race.

The most beautiful sight I could see was the Finish Line with the running clock.  As soon as I turned the final corner I took off and ran through the finish line.  I wanted to cry.  I seriously almost had tears in my eyes.  But when I made it through the swarm of people (they needed to all gtfo and back up a few feet) my dad had a cold beer cracked ready for me to drink.  It was the best reward I could have asked for. And the bananas, oranges, muffins, and granola bars.

Can’t wait for the next half marathon.

That is NOT uphill.