1/2 Marathon

There I was, standing at 6:15 on a Sunday Morning. It is pouring down rain, with lightening, and I am waiting to run a 10K I signed up for with work. I am grumpy. VERY grumpy. I ate crabs at my boyfriend's the night before, and had a luna bar for breakfast, and zero water. So I am also hungry, thirsty, and tired. My co-worker comes up, who signed up to run the 1/2 marathon and did not train, and stands next to me. I look over and realize why I am grumpy, and it is not the lack of food or the rain or the ungodly hour of the morning. It is because a 10K was not a challenge, I had been running 6 miles for weeks.

So what do I do? I run the 1/2 with my coworker instead. I just keep running. The rain let up around mile 5, I had to pee around mile 4, and my legs stopped feeling pain around mile 10. That's right, here is proof that you can run twice as much as you train for!

I have never run so mentally - much of our breath was spent on motivational statements, on making comments that it was only one more mile until the next mile, and the necessity of not stopping. It did not really get hard until the 9th mile, when the prospect of four more miles became hard to handle with heavy quads and an aching back.

But we did it! 13.2 untrained miles in 2.3 hours - I felt terrible for hours afterwords, and had some interesting digestion problems for a while. I was taken care of by the red-headed angel I am dating who took me home, stuck me in the shower, handed me pasta, and made me sleep.

No blisters though! Now I can check this off my one-year fitness goals!