Fáilte!

The people we choose to share our ups and downs with in life are our best friends, our confidants.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Running for My Life - Well That's What It Feels Like

New Years is the time for people to make resolutions for the next 12 months. For the most part I don’t make them, but this year my mom decided what our family needed was some bonding. How she put together bonding and a half marathon I will never figure out. In my mind I couldn’t reconcile 13.1 miles to family togetherness. The image that was occupying my mind was me dying and then being trampled to death by a horde of strangers. I felt like this was the more likely outcome. However, I had to admit I could use some positive changes in regards to my workout schedule (which was non-existent) and my physique, so I committed to the race. 13.1 miles – it takes me forever to drive that in my car around the city. I knew I wasn’t a Spring chicken anymore; long gone were the days where I could run forever and not feel a thing. This was going to be painful, but I kept my goals in the forefront of my mind. I signed myself and Sara up for a 5K race for the end of April just to prepare so we knew what a race day was like. I diligently followed a prescribed workout for a beginner that I found online. I never could have gotten through it if Liang hadn’t signed up for the Pittsburgh half marathon and made it possible for us to train together. She got me to run with her out in the snow and freezing temperatures, other nights I had to force myself down to our buildings workout room and put myself at the mercy of an unforgiving treadmill. I sweat a lot. Three months went by and my practice 5K race was before me. I was excited and nervous, but David and Sara were good sports and got up early to go. I thought it was going well until I thought I was on the last stretch and I put everything I had into crossing what I thought was the finish line. I wasn’t the only one to do so, but an entirely too entertained volunteer waved us on to show us we had some pavement to pound yet. Eventually we crossed that line, but I was much more cross by time I did than if it had ended where I thought it should have. Poor David tried so hard to get a picture of me, but as I was surrounded by some teenage boys when I ran by he just couldn’t get a good shot. Sara looked good though.
I finished and was content with my time, but I definitely wanted to improve before the half marathon. Liang and I increased our run lengths steadily, but due to schedule conflicts we never got past doing 11 miles. Somewhere along this journey I noticed a very pleasant side effect of all this hard work and dedication – I was finally losing weight!
 
By time the half marathon snuck up on me I had managed to shed a whopping 14 lbs. It goes without saying that I was pretty happy with myself. However, when race day did appear I found myself facing a challenge I wasn’t sure I was up to. It didn’t matter though, I was going to finish that race without walking if it killed me. I didn’t care about time or who I could beat. At this point the race had become an opponent in and of itself – I was going to finish. I started off with that mindset and it worked well – I had the sun shining down on me, the morning was beautiful aside from the fact I was in the middle of a mob of people that if startled could easily trample me to death. I tried to ignore that thought. Around mile 8 I felt my mind and body shift into a sort of autopilot and my mind was able to wander. Then around mile 11 I hit a wall. Not a literal wall, but it may as well have been. Every step further I took my body began to slow down a bit and made it that much more difficult to continue forward. Little by little I felt my body protest against what I was aiming to complete. So, again when I thought I was coming up to the finish line I got happy and excited and picked up my pace as much as I could. Then it seemed as if this chute to the finish line would last forever I realized I again fell for the illusion that the race was over before it actually ended. Well, I couldn’t slow down at this point so by time I reached the ACTUAL finish line I literally felt like my legs had no bones. But I had done it! 2 hours and 20 minutes after the start I found myself awkwardly trying to keep walking to keep from being run over by other runners who were coming across the finish line.
To the best of my knowledge never in my sports playing career had I ever sweat so much that my entire body was crusted in a layer of salt. That day I was. But I do have to admit it was humbling to realize that in the time it took me to run my 13 miles there were marathoners who did twice the distance in the same time. Those people are amazing! I was proud to have finished no matter the comparison, but not too proud to ask my dad to drive me back to their house since it didn’t seem like I was going to regain the normal use of my legs or feet for a while. David was proud of my accomplishment, but sadly he couldn’t join me so I headed back to my parents house to recover and celebrate with them.

It took me over a month to truly recover, and I honestly think it was even more like nearly 2 months. I had also signed up for a 5K in June as a sort of wind down race, and I even got Liang and my friend Serah to run in it as well. It was a fun race for a good cause, but I was disappointed that I ended up with about the same time as my first 5K race. It was probably since I didn’t do much training while I was recovering, but still! Ha ha I’m ridiculous, I know. But now I was really starting to see some physical change that I liked and I was feeling good. Then Liang suggested The Great Race 10K in Pittsburgh, and of course I was in for it. We kept running together when we could on weekends and during the week days I would either get up before work and run a 2.5 mile route or do it at night after work. We didn’t actually get in too many longer runs, in fact I don’t think we peaked over 4 miles at a time, but I was happy doing what we were doing so I didn’t change anything. It was fun and I was happy with my time J and I even managed NOT to get tricked into thinking we were finishing before we actually were. I had no idea how far we had gone at any point in the race so towards the end I just ignored when everyone started running faster until the crowds started getting bigger and bigger. Either way I finished and was happily done with my 6.25 miles in 54 minutes and 24 seconds. Certainly not a marathoner’s time, but I am completely okay with that! Liang excelled as well and we both are happy with our accomplishment. She was able to beat her last 10K race time so I tip my cap to her. She actually wrote a very nice post about this race if you are interested at The Great Race
In all I’ve been able to lose weight I wanted to and got to spend a lot of time with my best friend! Winning!

After the race I was talking with my mom and she thought it would be a blast to maybe try a Zombie 5k obstacle course next year, then I would truly be running for my life!...

1 comment:

  1. I'm so proud of all your hard work and dedication! You have a much stronger discipline than I do, haha, cuz I can't seem to get myself to go down to the gym any random time. No joke, if you hadn't been signed up for the half-marathon, I doubt I would have gone ahead to do my half-marathon. I dawdled on the decision for so long because I didn't have a running partner. So I have you to thank for keeping in shape/conditioning this past year =) It's been so fun. We need to keep running though or else all the holiday baking I am anticipating is going to catch up with me...

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