delusion?

Uh oh. I'm teetering past my 50/50 mark: where the yes's may be starting to outweigh the no's to do a marathon.....

1) aside from a couple healing blisters, I'm feeling pretty good. A little stiff but no more so than any other long run which tells me my body is stronger and recovering faster despite not training adequately for the half.

2) in the past during and even after I've said that I had no real desire to run further than the half. Not this time. Even during the hardest parts, I found myself thinking the marathon.

And now I find myself looking at potential ones for next year and not freaking out that I'm doing so and wanting to ask people if they've done it before, experience. I want to start planning training....

Oh dear. Falling down the rabbit hole....

Big Woods Run Half Marathon 2013

I did it! This was my 3rd year doing this race and what an experience. Every year provides it own set of obstacles. Last year it was rainy. The year before, cold. This year the weather was perfect, but I found myself feeling the least prepared I've ever felt for the event.

The consistency of a training regimen had been absent thanks to a dreadful heat wave in late August/early September that killed all of my motivation. By the last 3 weeks I found myself only getting out for my long run but not completing any maintenance runs between. I would consider this training session's tagline to follow the cliche of the road to hell being paved with best intentions because I kept meaning to step it up. I kept meaning to try harder to squeeze in even a short run. Then suddenly it was a week before and the furthest I had run is 9.5 and that was filled with walking for the last 3.5.

Long story short, excuses and lots of them. So I woke up Saturday morning after a mere 4 hours of sleep, loaded up on a good breakfast and set out for the race with absolutely no expectations. Its a trail run so I decided that I would own up to my lack of training and if anything it would be a lovely walk through the state park. That's what I kept telling myself so that I would stop mentally beating myself up for not training adequately.... Now on to the actual race:

Pre-race, I couldn't get the music player on my phone to respond (my efforts to create a playlist of music were now just a waste). I checked my battery life and it was less than the amount of time I would be running so now I had to look forward to a quiet run no matter what and no way to tech to tell me just how I was doing. I had purposely chosen my phone belt over my water belt (deciding to fully utilize the water stops instead for a change) and now it would just be there non-functional. Great. I still wore it though. Why? Safety blanket I guess.

So I embarked on this run with my safety blanket, some homemade energy gel tucked in my sports bra (one of those hidden perks of being female! Sports bras make excellent storage spaces) and absolutely no confidence that this would be anything but a long painful yet pretty walk.

I tried to utilize Pandora radio for a bit so I could have some music and it was actually nice until I entered the park, then I realized the music was almost too distracting for me. Patchy coverage plus an overwhelming feeling that it was cheapening the splendor of the world around me so I tried an audiobook for awhile but that wasn't working for me that well either so I gave up. Next year, I'm leaving the tech in the car. Trail runs are so different than a road race. You're focusing on not tripping on roots, on the world around you. Its more than one foot in front of the other on even pavement where you need distraction.

The first 4 miles flew by. I felt great. I was in my happy place but I was facing the next 2 miles with a sense of anticipation. There's wicked hills at mile 6 and mile 9.5 and many many little hills in between. I knew it was coming which is either a good thing or a bad depending on perspective. So when I hit that mile 6 hill I owned up to it and walked. I knew i still had 7 miles ahead of me and no confidence of actually being able to finish. After mile 6, its a different race for me. My strategy changed from just keep running to "run while it feels good, walk when it doesn't" and actually that served me pretty well! Its also when my lack of proper training made itself fully aware. I started feeling twinges in my right calf muscle right after I'd be running and starting to feel like I hit my stride so I'd have to back off and walk which was incredibly frustrating.

I spent the whole race alternating between feeling blessed, happy & able to run and feeling utterly depleted, asking myself why I continually do this to myself. What kept me going? Knowing those moments of euphoria outweigh the despairing moments. A run like this is the closest I get to a religious experience. I had 2.5 hours to myself to think, to observe, to relish in the splendor of fall in MN. Two and a half hours to feel truly grateful.

I may be moving quite awkwardly today due to feet blisters & sore calves, but its worth it!

And, I beat my time from last year by 2 minutes somehow!
2011: 2:36
2012: 2:32
2013: 2:30