I did it!

I finished it! All those hours at the gym, miles pounding the pavement, all the handfuls of Advil…totally paid off!

The race itself was not exactly what I expected. I got up to Lake Geneva a couple hours after work on Friday, grabbed dinner with Michaela and Marty, and then headed straight to bed. I knew I had a long day ahead of me on Saturday.

The next morning I was up early. I felt pretty good, but a little bit nervous. We got to the starting area quickly, and it wasn’t the kind of race I was used to. For instance, people were milling about everywhere, whether or not they were actually going to race. In addition, the race wasn’t very big. Once I crossed the starting line, it was basically a single file line, there was no one to really weave around. Oh wait, and there was another thing.

Giant Hills.

For those of you unfamiliar with the great city of Chicago, it’s flat. Extremely flat. I had been training on flat pavement and treadmills for months. I was well equipped to deal with that. I was confident that I could run 13.1 miles of flat terrain. So we took off past the start, and I was feeling great. Aretha Franklin was blasting, people were cheering it was great. I rounded a turn, and there I was, at the base of a nearly .5 mile hill. I almost gave up right then and there.

However, I thought after all the hours I’d put in, I should at least give it to the top of the hill. So I did, and then I felt pretty good. Except then there was another hill. And another…winding, steep, rolling, you name it, it was there. It was absolutely outrageous, as if it wasn’t enough that we were running 13 miles. Like it really needed to be harder.

Eventually, I got used to it, and adjusted. I tried to push through the uphills and coast down the hills. Things got a little more interesting when I realized that no, this was not Chicago, so no, there wouldn’t be clocks at every mile. In fact, the mile markers themselves were tiny pieces of white paper with a mile written in Sharpie hammered into the ground. So tiny that I missed miles 7,8, and 9, and thought that I had just started running a 30 minute mile. Right before mile 10 I saw Marty and Jon cheering and carrying signs, so that gave me a short burst of adrenaline. I cranked up my music and powered through the rest of the race, finally crossing the finish line at 2:10:50, fifty seconds slower than what I originally set my goal at.

I’m okay with this.

More than okay, actually. I’m proud of myself for setting a goal that I thought was impossible, and doing it anyway. I’m proud that I stepped out of my comfort zone, learned how to get comfortable in my own two legs, and went for it. And even though I might act like it’s not that big of a deal and that I would have liked to pick up the pace a little, I’m feeling good about myself. At every mile marker I saw, I thought about the week that I had done that length race first, and how hard it had seemed, and how now, I was exceeding it. Pushing through it. That’s how I want to approach everything.

I’m a little worried I won’t have as much to write about anymore, but I think I am going to take this opportunity to do some other activities. Re-devote myself to spinning, for instance. I’d also like to work on my Pilates, which I had given up. I’ve got some shorter races coming up, so I’ll keep running. And the Farmer’s Market starts next weekend, so there will be lots to report on that. I want to build off this feeling of accomplishment and spread it to other areas of my life that need dusting off. Summer’s a great time to work on that.

In parting, I will leave you with something my mom once told me (in the form of giving me a magnet with this saying on it): Do something every day that scares you. I don’t do this enough, but for the last several months, I’ve been waking up scared of this race every freaking morning. Of whether or not I’d get hit by a car on my run, if I could do it without injuring myself, if I could do it at all. And now, it seems silly. Of course I could do it.

Stretching out before the race

I'm in the blue, this is at around the 10th mile

Here I come!

13.1 miles...check!

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