FIRST HALF MARATHON

I am in fact in this photo- see tiny spec with pink shoes

I completed the race a few weeks ago and have needed a few weeks to resuscitate my ego, it took everything out of me. There are a few things I'm fairly sure I did wrong in my final week of training as well as my nutrition for that morning, not to mention my realization a few weeks later that my foot wear was a fair bit out of its league for such a race. However I thought I would first post a play by play of my mental,emotional and physical breakdown.

The race was in Sandton city, I had my reservations about a race in Sandton as it seems to be made up purely of hills to me but signed up for the race anyway as my running partner was already signed up. I waited on my own at the starting line because I couldn't find my running partners amongst the thousands of other runners. The start was fine, I tried to ignore the frantic initial rush and thought this run would be breezy as the first 2 km was all flat. Making my way down the first hill I found my running partners (hallelujah, familiar shoes to watch ahead of me) the down hill was followed by an all too brief flat before starting our first big up hill, an uphill is of coarse followed by a steep down hill and since this was Sandton the down hill was followed by an extremely long up hill, followed by a flat and then another up hill, followed by a long up hill a steep down hill and then an uphill I felt like I could have done on my hands and knees (you see the pattern here). The joy of it all was that the route was in fact a 10.5km route that you had to lap twice, so just when you thought you must have conquered the hillafterhillafterfreakinghill first half of the run you got to do it all over again.

It was at the 10km water point that I decided that running was actually the worst thing in the whole world, contemplated quitting, got lapped by the winner who was on his way to the finish line and decided after I had finished this half marathon that I was going to hang up my running shoes and never run again. I lost my running partner and watched one person after another pass me. I made it to the end and contemplated vomiting on the finish line.

I finished in 2hrs and 28mins, exactly 28mins longer than I had planned it to take me.

I was extremely humbled and developed a huge respect for the others in this sport who run three or four times that distance and finish with a positive attitude. My husband also helped remind me I wasn't as fit as I thought I was by saying "you should of seen some of the people who finished ahead of you, there was this fat mama with her hair all perfectly done who breezed in like 20 minutes before you", yup consider me humbled.  

...to be continued (in part two I go back to running, never fear)