(mc)cloud nine. : October 2013

This weekend I ran a half marathon. That's 13.1 miles. I think that point 1 miles was my favorite. I've been trying to compile my thoughts on this adventure and it's proven to be a very hard task. I'll just start from the beginning......

When I was 17 I had major knee surgery. It pretty much halted most of my dancing and the doctor assured me that running wasn't going to be something I would be able to do.

Flash forward two-ish years and I start having horrible hip/back pain. I had all kinds of test ran and pretty much they thought I was crazy, it didn't really look like anything was wrong. But, they gave me lots of steroid injections to ease the pain for the next few years.

And now we're in August of 2012. I kept driving by a CrossFit gym and thought, "hey, I should try that." I became hooked and learned all kinds of things about keeping my body from getting injured. I learned that lots of knee pain starts in the hip and that working my I.T. band would alleviate that pain. I started doing things that would've had me in tears a few years before with knee pain and I was pain free, most of the time.

In December my dad got hurt and saw a chiropractor, he swore he was a miracle worker. So I started going to the same chiropractor and he started really working with my hips and getting them stretched out so my knee wouldn't hurt. By doing this, my hip and back pain disappeared. I was doing box jumps, wall balls and running with zero pain and I was happy.

In June CrossFit offered a running clinic to help with your running and endurance, I jumped at the chance thinking running may eventually be fun for me. I learned so much about running and I wasn't hating it any more. So I decided it was finally time to run that 1/2 marathon I had been wanting to do since 2011.

I started working with a CrossFit Endurance coach, and all around great person. I ran 3 times a week, usually a sprint work out on Thursday, a speed work out on Saturdays and then a pacing run on Sundays. I was also doing CrossFit WODs on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I never accumulated more than 6 miles on my runs, including my warm ups/cool downs. I had so many people tell me I wasn't running enough miles, there was no way I was actually going to be able to run the entire thing and that I just plain couldn't do it. And I'm not going to lie, some times I started to believe them. Luckily, Coach Mary is a great person, like I already mentioned, and just kept telling me that she believed in me and I could.

Training wasn't easy, it wasn't always fun and there was one run that I had a panic attack and cried during the middle of. But I finished training and was going to that start line on Sunday.

I may be a little dramatic and a bit of a mess. And that was definitely shown on Saturday night. I surprised myself when I figured out how to do everything on my own. Mary is a saint for putting up with me. I may have gotten to our meeting place 30 minutes early on Sunday morning with a text message sent saying, "I know I'm early, but I'm lost." I was so nervous. I can't even pick a number on a scale because no scale goes high enough.

At 6:55 a.m. Mary left me in line (she's much faster than I am so she had to be at the front), I put my head phones on, found my satellites and we were off. This was my first race besides two 5ks that were attended by less than 200 people. There were a lot of bodies down there.

We started running, the first song that came on was Roar and I was ready. We set off and I was feeling good. I had to be careful not to take off too fast so I was keeping my sweet little 11:24 pace and running along. Miles 1-4 were overwhelming because there were so many people but I'd ran that distance a lot so I knew I could do it. I knew there was a hill in mile 4 so I was ready for it. And it was easy.

Miles 5 & 6 were a little tough, 6 miles was the most I'd ran but I knew I could make it so getting my head in the right place was hard. Living inside my head is hard in general, I try to do positive self talk but mostly I get, "Come on you can do this...You're just telling yourself that because you know you can't." But I worked around it. There was one hill in this stretch that I wasn't aware of and it was surprising and not fun. But I figured since Mary said there was only one hill at mile 4 that I should just suck it up and get up it.

Mile 7 was a lot of, "if you get through this you're over half way there" and "oh hey, maybe I can actually do this, I haven't stopped running and I don't feel that bad, except for that blister I can feel on my left foot."

And then we got to this horrible stretch where we were running on a highway, cars were still allowed to drive it so they were flying by us and I could see the greenway that I knew I was going to have to run on get back to the finish line. Miles 8 & 9 were what I believe hell might be like. Every step sucked. I on multiple occasions thought to myself "why would anyone do this for fun, or more than once." But, I'd heard that is the hardest part of a run and that once you get over that hump it's easier. So I would remind myself of that and keep moving my feet. And I got to take a stinger (these honey things that give you energy and taste really bad) at mile 9 to give me some more energy. So here I was trucking along and thinking now that I had missed the split for the 1/2 and was on the full route. I'd made a plan that if I was on the full route I'd just stop at 13.1 show my Garmin to the race director and make someone come and get me. And then I saw the split and the greenway and knew I was on the home stretch, I thought these last 4 miles were going to be easy, I can run 4 miles any day.

And I was telling myself a lie. Those last 4 miles were miserable. I hated them. I could see the boat and I knew the finish line was there but it just didn't seem like I could get to it. Miles 9-11 were not my favorite. I didn't get "runners high" and I didn't feel like I was over the hump. I just kept telling myself, "if you stop now you're never going to make it to the finish line." And that was the only thing that kept my legs moving. I also felt like my legs were turning into cement.

Then I hit mile 24. It was the half's mile 12 but saying mile 24 made be feel better. And then all I could hear in my head was my CrossFit coach Johnny saying "you have 20 minutes left, you can do anything for 20 minutes." And guess what, I ran for 20 more minutes. On mile 13 there were about 5 short but steep hills that I had NO idea were coming and they were probably the most difficult part of the course but my friend Scott told me the weekend before, "people make mistakes on hills and take long strides, just take short choppy steps and it's so much easier." I took short, choppy, slow steps and made it up those freaking hills. And I saw my 4th bridge and I knew I was coming down the home stretch.

Mile 13 was fun, kind of. I just ran for 12 miles and over 2 hours so I was really over it so I was all, "just finish this stinking race." And I ran across that bridge, rounded the corner to see my sweet daddy standing there clapping for me and then I was down the home stretch. Whoever decided to end that race running down hill deserves a serious award. That was the best part. I crossed the finish line, got a medal, had mom in my face taking pictures, got to see my best friend Natalie waiting at the end for me and then I finally got to breathe after running for 02:34:36.

After the 13.1 miles I felt so much better than I thought I would. I knew I had a blister on my foot that hurt like no other but that was it. It was weird and I just ran a half marathon, wooohooo go me!!!

After Mary crossed the finish line she said, "and those people who told you you couldn't, screw them." And that's really what I wanted to shout!!! I was very proud of myself and so confused as to why people would put themselves through the misery of running twice what I just did.

But, 4 days later it kind of makes sense. You feel a sense of accomplishment and can say "I ran 13.1 miles, if it was easy everyone would do it but it's not and I did it." I am officially signing up for the Knoxville half at the end of March. I'm sure I'll be kicking myself the entire month of March preparing for it and running a million, trillion hill sprints but I know the end result will be worth it.

I'm so thankful that I have a CrossFit family that cheered me on and supported me and trained me along the way. I couldn't have done it without them.

Here are some photos of the day!