Half Marathoner

I did it! It's quite an accomplishment considering i only trained for a few months. I finished around 1:50, but I am not sure if that is correct. During the final mile my vision became blurred and my eyes were half shut. I am not sure if it was due to not enough sleep, or fatigue, or food, but probably all three.

April didn't get home til midnight, and I couldn't sleep well anyway, so this morning it was a pretty rough awakening. I also had to spend some time finding the info for her to park. We were going to go together, but she and her friend had got lost going to and from the wedding, so she was tired from driving around and didn't want to go with me.

I was excited when i got there, it was pretty warm out, and so I left all my gear in the car, extra shirts, and a few other things like that. I stretched out a little, but it felt weird being around so many runners, normally i'm just stretching in my apartment alone. Things moved pretty fast, about the time they were getting ready to sing the anthem and shoot the gun, a downpour occured. It was nice, but also made things seem more tense than they had to be. I was soaked by the time the gun shot, and people just shot out of the start. All the "elite" runners were ahead of me and about half a mile out over the first hill.

Splish splash, splash, splash along the course. I hadn't trained in the rain at all. My shirt was already stuck to my chest and my shoes felt they weighed ten pounds each. But I tried to maintain a pace and just keep going. At the 3 mile marker I lost hope. My legs were already burning, I started too fast, even though it seemed i was jogging. At this point I wondered if I was even going to make it to the finish.

I kept on, mile 4, mile5, mile6, splish splash, breath deep. I knew mile 7 had a huge hill, and there it was, man I slowed to a crawl on that thing. My base training included very little hill work (strength) or speed work so I wasn't expecting much, but figured my daily runs would pull me through. They did, but the strength just wasn't there and so many people were just passing me by.

I got a drink at every water stop, and my stomach was hurting for a while, finally quit around mile 9. At this point I began just keeping moving. A zombie like state of just following the pack. At mile 11 another huge hill came and i started walking. A man ran by and patted me on the shoulder, just what i needed to pick it up and make that hill.

At 12 all eye function began to shut down. My eyes were half shut and i could feel myself almost falling asleep. My body was telling me I needed to rest. But i just kept my arms moving and focused on someones feet. My stomach was empty, all energy and food was gone, I kept moving my overworked legs. Down a giant hill almost there, but wait that wasn't the finish! aah. I almost lost it for a second, a half mile more and I burnt a huge amount of energy on that hill. Oh well, trucked up another hill and saw the stadium, finally.

Running into the stadium onto the grass I felt my shoes sink into the turf and started lifting my knees higher to compensate. My eyes were blurry, from blood being diverted from my brain and head down into my jello legs. I remember the clock seconds, but couldn't read the rest, 30, 31, 32, 33. That was it, i have no idea what the finish time was. I raised my hands a little as i went through the line, and stumbled around to find water.

I drank about 2 liters of water in 5 minutes. I was hungry and began dreaming about the five pretzels i put into a baggy that were in my car. Oh how those would be tasty. I sat in the bleachers for a half-hour in the rain and just tried to regroup, my legs were shaky. I stumbled a half-mile to the afterparty in hopes of finding food. I did and ate almost everthying i put on the plate- i.e. too much.
I found a sofa and stared out the window for 20 minutes downing 2 bottles of powerade and trying to warm up from being wet. I stumbled and limped back to my car 1 mile and smiled as I looked down at the medal that said "half-marathon". It felt good to actually finish. It was hard and I earned it.


April didn't make it due to traffic being stopped for the race. But she tried, that's all that mattered to me. Next time maybe we can do one together. I'll try and convince her, but until then I'm going to keep working hard.