6 great miles and 7.1 miles of pain

[An entry from September 2010 that I found today...it made me think of other big goals, a needed reread for me today.]

The Adirondack Half Marathon arrived and thankfully, departed.

Prelude 1: We meet up with a fellow first-timer and old friend, Jenn, and her friend Sam. I love Jenn to pieces. She is one of those friends that I wish lived closer. She is amazing at many things. Including talking about the bathroom. Not as in designing or cleaning, but going to. Anyhow, her bathroom talk completely distracted me from the fact I was about to run 13.1 miles. For "fun."

Prelude 2: We get up to the start line where I run into another person I know, Sereena, who is an amazing runner. As in uber-fast. As in I ask, "Did your kids come up with you?" Her response: "No, it didn't make sense for less than 2 hours." Right. Less than 2 hours. I will never, ever see her on the course.

The Race: Everyone huddles up for the start, the gun goes off and off we go. With my blessing, Kelly leaves me in the dust, which means for the next 3 hours it is me and my iPod (no lectures about running with an iPod!). Let me tell you, the first 6 miles of the course felt so good. I felt like I could run all day. My stride was decent, my pace was steady, there were fun people along the course. And then I hit 6.1. Actually, it had to be a little later than that because I crossed the halfway pad before all hell broke loose. So 6+ awesome miles. Then I got calf cramps. Since I am just a casual runner who never had calf cramps before, I had no idea what to do. So I stopped running and hobbled/walked the rest of the course.


My time totally sucked. But I finished. I, who could not run a 5K four months ago finished a half marathon. I am pretty damn proud of doing that.