The Day I Thought I Would Die

There are a number of things that, had you asked me in early November if I would ever do in my life, I would have said no. Wear skinny jeans? Nope. Earrings? Nada-the holes have closed. Put on a pair of trendy boots? Who are you kidding? Run a half marathon? You've got to be kidding me!

I don't know what happened?! By mid January I had done ALL OF THOSE THINGS. It's like something possessed me. Weird.

The weirdest though was definitely running the half. Before November I'd never run more than 4 miles at one time in my whole life. And I had only done that once (and it was a year before). Typically I ran 2-3 miles several times a week and felt good about life. (I should say though that just a short year and a half ago I swore I would never be a runner, so even the running thing is a little weird.)

Then one Saturday morning I went out for a run with a few of my friends. When they announced that they were running 4 I said-that's great! I'll run my 3 and see you at the finish line. But when I hit the 3 mile mark I felt fine so I decided to go a little farther until I had run 4 and a quarter. And you know what? It felt GOOD!

Same thing happened at 5 miles. I started to think maybe I liked running a little farther. Then they wanted me to do 7 miles. I did. That was the day after I had a stomach bug, so it didn't go well and I wanted to die. But somehow they convinced me to keep going.

Anyway, I ended up training up to 9.5 miles and then bowed out of any further training because of a foot injury that I didn't want to exacerbate.

Over Martin Luther King weekend we headed down to St. George and I did it. I ran a half marathon. My first and last. Seriously. That was HARD! I was cruising along feeling GREAT up until about mile 9 or 10 and then I hit a WALL. This course was very hilly and we had trained on a track (ie. flat). It was just hard.

But I did it and I feel great about it.

I ran the whole thing with this lady. We got each other through and truthfully, she's the reason I did it. (Why am I friends with her?!) There's a sweet deal in it for me though. She's now not allowed to ever move away from the town we live in. Which means I will have a good rest of my life. Which was worth 2 and a half hours of pain. (I look a little like a goon but hey-I just ran 13.1 miles!)

 

 Here are the other half marathon runners that I went down with:

And the whole group that went down. (Three smart ones didn't run.)

And can I just say that I LOVE these ladies and I am so glad to be friends with them. They are neat people and we had a ton of fun. It was 65 that day so after the race we hot tubbed, ate, laid in the sunshine, talked, played games and just had a blast. I am so happy to have found such great friends so soon after moving here.