A friend of my husband and myself does triathlons. I don't know how he does it but he does. Well I found it highly motivating but knowing that I can't swim, I went with picking up running instead. Now, keep in mind that I used to hate cardio. It was the part of my workout routine that I despised the most. But I decided to go for it anyway. I ran on the treadmill at first and I kept thinking to myself, "I can't do this. Ten minutes is a long freaking time to be running and not actually getting anywhere." Well ten minutes came and it felt good. So good. Week after week, I made those minutes grow. I pushed on even when my legs screamed for me to stop.
Fast forward to the beginning of last year when I started really running. I had a goal. I wanted to do a half-marathon. But I knew I wasn't ready so I did the 5k Color Run back in July. That was amazing. It was such a rush that I wanted to keep going.
Fast forward again to February of this year where I decided that I was going to sign up for my first half-marathon. Keep in mind, folks. That's 13.1 miles or 21k. That's a lot of miles, feet and steps. And the marathon would be in April and I knew living in Canada that I would be competing with the weather. So I messaged this friend and asked him first if I even had time to train. And I did. So I signed up.
I trained. First couple of weeks went really well and then for whatever reason, I lost that drive. Motivation maybe? I'm not sure. But I just didn't want to run. I found at that point that because I HAD to run, I didn't want to do it. So there were at least 2-3 weeks there near the ending of my training where I only ran once a week.
So last week, I had enough. I sat myself down and said, "Self, we got this. We've training for this since February. We even ran in Colombia in over 100F/30C weather. We got this. We WANT this."
So I got up, dusted off my insecurities and went for a run. And it felt good. So freaking good to be back in the game.
Well marathon day came. That was today.
I couldn't sleep last night. At at all. Maybe 4 hours at the most. But I got up at 530am, had coffee, breakfast (something light because I don't usually eat a lot before my runs) and got ready.
My friend picked me up for 730am and drove us downtown where the race was starting and finishing. Being there, with those people, with those other like-minded, half-crazy people, was exhilarating.
But it was cold. I'm very glad I kept on my sweater and wore my gloves. It helped a lot.
So 8am came and that was when the race started. We got the sound off and we moved. It was everything I thought it would be and more.
13.1 miles/21k.
It will be a race I'll never forget.
It was also my first so that could be why as well.
But it was hard. Harder than I thought it would be. I got to about 10k (6.2 miles for my American peeps) and that was when I wanted to stop. I was like, okay, I'm done. Let's go home and have a burger. But I didn't. I pushed on.
2 hours and 43 minutes later and I was crossing the finish line. I wanted to cry. I wanted to keel over. I wanted to throw up. But I did it.
And now I can work toward being faster.
If you've read this far (thank you by the way), just know that if I can do it, so can you.
