First Half Marathon…Finished!!!

You guys!!! I am so so so excited to share with you that over the weekend I ran my first ever Half Marathon!!! I am soooo happy right now! 13.1 miles…check and done! I have never, ever considered myself a runner. In fact, you may remember this post here where I made myself do the Couch to 5K program a few summers ago and I actually finished it (which was quite a lofty goal coming from this non-runner girl). Running is just not in my blood, it has never come easy to me so the fact that I ran 13.1 miles and have the medal to prove it is so boss!
When I completed my first 5K race three summers ago I continued to run the rest of the summer and was able to get up to 6.2 miles which, when you are not a fast runner, takes about an hour to do. But once I hit the hour mark I just got bored. I hated my music playlist and I couldn’t find a podcast I liked that was more than 30 or 45 minutes long, and I kept thinking of everything else I could be doing with a whole hour of my time. So once the weather turned cold in the fall I stopped running. I am not a cold weather person at all so when the weather gets chilly I stay inside!

When summer came again I just had no interest in running. It was so hot and humid so early and with my littles in camps at different hours of the day, work, and blogging, there was just no time to fit it in my schedule. I know, I know, a poor excuse but I owned it. Which brings us to this past summer. I had some friends who would get together and run on the weekends and I thought maybe I should join them. Why you ask? I have no idea. I thought it might be fun but I was kinda scared. All the running I ever did was solo, I had never run with another person. I kept thinking it would be too hard…what if I couldn’t keep up? What if I couldn’t regulate my breathing while talking? Did they even talk when they ran? I had to get up at 6 am, whaat!!! So many things. After skipping out of a few weekend runs, in the beginning of June I finally made myself get up early and run. And guess what? I loved it!

Running with other people was so fun! Having friends to chit chat with made the miles fly by so quickly. We ran on a beautiful trail which made the run even more fun because my soul was so happy out in nature, it wasn’t my boring neighborhood where I had memorized every bump and crack in the pavement. I was sold. Every weekend we would meet up I wanted to run more miles. Running with friends helped my running mindset so much. I am such a busy body that when I would  run for an hour I would think about all the things I could or should be doing instead. I would start competing with myself on my running times trying to make each run a personal best which then made every run awful. But just as I was getting my groove back my running buddies started getting injured and life got in the way as we went on a long vacation. By the end of summer I wasn’t running my one day a week anymore. But the thing was, I had the bug. Now I wanted to run. There was something inside of me that thought if I felt running 4 miles with my friends was actually fun that maybe just maybe I could do 6…or 8…or heck 13.1 miles. So towards the end of September I finally got the courage to jump online and started looking for half marathons near Chicago. I found the last one of the season to be run on Nov. 28. I calculated that it gave me exactly 10 weeks to train for it and then went right back online to find a training program. I told myself that I would do the program until I couldn’t do it anymore and I actually did. I ran in the cold rain, at night, and early in the morning, really whenever I had child care for the littles and could fit it in, I could’t believe how I was actually staying on top of it. I missed about two weeks worth of training runs with our anniversary weekend, a work trip to Michigan, Thanksgiving happenings, etc. but as soon as I was back in my routine I picked up right where I left off. For the most part I felt pretty good about my long runs and on my longest run I actually ran 13.1 just to see if I could do it. I felt ready!
The week of the race was all about the weather forecast. We had a huge snowstorm the Saturday before the half and I was worried that I wouldn’t get to run at all. All that training for nothing, ugh! But as the day approached the forecast looked good. 35 degrees and with windchill it would be hovering around 30 degrees outside. Not good but not snow so not awful. I picked up my race bib and sweatshirt the day before the race then figured out my running gear and hoped for the best.

On the day of the race, as Clif and the kids were dropping me off to catch the bus to the starting line he spied my lovely friend Susan (running with me in the picture above!) and her husband!!! Yay for friends to chat with while waiting in the freezing cold for the race to start! And as luck would have it even more, as we got to talking on the bus, she runs my exact pace! So we could be running buddies!!! Whaaat?!?! When does that ever happen! It’s so funny in all the times we have ever hung out we have never chatted about running, I mean we both knew each other ran but we never officially talked about it. Baby carriers, yes. Yarn, yes. Knitting, yes. She even taught me how to get to that second line when I was learning how to crochet! So crazy! The race was really good. It was really really cold though. I think it took me until mile 3 to warm up and start sweating. Then it around mile 9 the wind picked up and I was freezing all over again. Miles 10-12 were rough because I was just so cold and like I said before, I’m not a cold weather person at all! My hands were numb and I lost my gloves and I was listening to Cheryl Strayed’s book ‘Wild’ and it was the part where she was talking about was how hard her first couple of weeks were as she was hiking on the PCT, she goes into detail about how her feet hurt and her skin is rubbed raw by her clothes and hiking boots, ugh, not a really a great thing to hear while your body is starting to tire on mile 10 of a 13.1 race!

Overall, I feel like I ran at a nice and relaxed pace for being frozen solid. Not as fast as my training runs but with being so cold I feel like I did well. I felt decent until that last 1/2 mile. That little bit was so hard, my legs were so numb. But errmagawd I did it!!!!
I still cannot believe I ran a Half Marathon!!!

Me!

Really!

I am so thankful that I am able to run, to have my health, and to have such supportive family and friends. I can’t believe that I am actually going to say this, but I can’t wait for the weather to warm up in the spring so I can run another one! 🙂

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading today!

Love,

Maggie

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