Thoughts from the roadrunner part three (the ramblingest yet!)

I'm going to wrap the mini-series on half-marathons up now. It's about time!

We are ready to goooo! 

So, we went to the starting line. There was NO ORDER. Masses of people just swarmed together; there was a bit of pushing and shoving and "excuse me"'s.
The countdown timer to the start of the race hit zero.
Nothing happened.
A minute passed.
I tied my shoes.
Still nothing, just people standing expectantly.
Finally a guy with a bullhorn said, "Get Ready Racers! Go!" He also mumbled some other things, but no one could understand him. Hopefully it wasn't anything important, like the winning lotto numbers for the next day...

And we went. When you first start, you want to start strong. But you can't run. You have to just walk with the mass of humanity for about a 1/4 mile, and THEN you can actually run.

The main challenge is to pace. Pacing is a terribly difficult thing. At the start, people are sprinting and flying down the road. I wanted to sprint just like everyone else was, but I knew that I'd need energy for the next 13 miles.


Mom and I had decided beforehand that we weren't really going to worry about our times, and that we would just stick together for the race. It was nice to have a running buddy.
We ran 10 minute-miles -- a nice pace. Not too fast, but not super slow. At that pace, I can go for a nice long while--though it's tempting to speed up. But speeding up = early exhaustion, and we don't want that.

This course was extremely hilly. There weren't any flat spots. You were either going uphill or downhill.
See?

The weather was gray and damp. There was a chill in the air, but when you're running, you can hardly feel it. The first 4 miles were no sweat, but then I needed to tie my shoe.
Urg. Urg, urg, arg!
Running up and down hills had loosened my laces, and it felt like my shoe was about to fall off. So, Mom and I found a spot where I could retighten my shoe.
Then came a mega hill.
I mean, it was crazy. See? there at mile 5? That was the hill.
I felt so out-of-shape wheezing up that hill--in fact, walking would have been faster. So that's what we did, we walked some of the hill.
Around mile 6 came the turnaround. it felt so defeatist, to just come to a point in the road where one had to simply go back from whence they came.
We could have cheated and turned back at any point along our route, and no one would have been the wiser (there wasn't a tracking pad for our time chips anywhere over there) But we were good runners and we followed the course.
So, as I was running, I began to feel pain in my tendons. I had stretched, but I guess my body was having a hard time with all of the repetitive movement. The tendons that run along the insides of my ankles were on fire, my left hip flexor was sending signals that it wasn't feeling so hot, and beads of sweat were pouring down my face.
I kept pushing. Only a few more miles, right?
The pain grew worse.
Finally, it got to the point that we walked for probably 1/4 mile or so.

Running is just one big mental game: How long can you force your body to move against its will?

So, legs on fire. Check.
Hilly course. Check.

So, how on earth did I keep from getting bored? I'm sure that's what you're wondering...because it's easy to get bored while you're running.

Let me preface this by saying that there was a rule about headphones.
The rule stated that no ipods or music players were allowed during the marathon.
For a while, leading up to the race, my mom and I tried to think of a way to have discreet music (taping the earbuds behind our ears, hiding the cords, etc), but we decided that it would be best to just follow the rules.
When we got to the race 50% of the people had earbuds in.
50%!

Mom and I started laughing as I would point at the people wearing earbuds and ever-so-quietly yell, "CHEATER!" in my best nerdy-follow-the-rules voice.

'scuse me, but, ah, you're a CHEATER!

I was discreet, I promise. I just said it to mom. As we ran, that was one thing that kept me going: finding the cheaters. And we laughed (smirked, I had no energy to laugh) every time.

Another thing that kept me going was simply counting my steps. if there are 5280 feet in a mile, then I knew when I hit that number of steps that I would possibly have gone over a mile.

Also, I NEVER want a picture taken of me when I'm running. NEVER. I didn't know there would be so many cameras around, because I now know that I make funny faces when I run. Ew. Next time, I'll try to smile when I see a camera.

So after 11 miles, we had two miles to go. Mom said that if I felt like I still had some gas in the can, then I should gas it at this point.
I did.
Oh boy I did.
From somewhere deep inside, I found the ability to sprint hard during the last mile.
I crossed the finish line, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of accomplishment.
I felt so giddy. I was beaming, I'm sure. Where were the cameras THEN, eh?

I was then hit with a sense of exhaustion.
It was a chilly day, and I was sweaty (gross, but true), so I was chilling fast. We grabbed some chocolate milk and bananas to munch on post-race. We walked around to help our legs recover.

On the way back to the motel, Dad stopped off at Starbucks. YESSS.
I got a white chocolate mocha. Yum.
I took a picture of myself in the Starbucks bathroom. I looked ROUGH.



We went back, got showers, packed up, and decided to tool around for a bit.
My feet did NOT want to walk, but walk I made them.

We decided to go to Monticello, but soon found out it was $22 a head to go up to the house. Not happening. We toured the gift shop and the museum.
This will have to do as far as seeing the actual house:

Then we ate lunch and drove home. It was a relaxing drive, and when I got home, I slept. 

I should also say that walking was not very easy for the next 48 hours after the race. I had blisters, nice big ones, and my leg muscles were cramping. But it was all worth it. I'm going to do another race again soon. Because I know I can beat my last time, and I know that I can run over 10 miles without dying.