I think that running a half-marathon has been on my “goals” list since 2004. I remember well training for that with Jen’s Cody; I blew my ankle about a week before the race & cheered Cody on from the sidelines*smile*. Saturday my running partner & I finally just said- “Let’s do it”. It had been postponed since Easter weekend (first him then me). Here’s a brief rundown of our Saturday morning.
We met at the usual spot, usual time. We set off on the route I had mapped out to cover the 21 kilometres. About 5 km’s in Coach wants to take a different route & after a couple of seconds of confusion we realized a minor miscommunication. But no worries- coach could do 21km’s in his sleep, so he agrees to running the 21km's. Nothing of interest happens until I pull over to do a bit of stretching- that was around the 16km mark. (My goal was to run until about 15-17km & then catch my breath & stretch out a bit) so I was quite chuffed to have reached that point. At 17km I rolled my ankle which was no big deal because I do that all the time. By 18km I had a stitch that wouldn’t go away but I certainly wasn’t stopping. Then I got grumpy & said “Coach, this isn’t fun anymore. I think I max out at about 18km”. Then we started with the psycho-babble: “We’re so fortunate to have our health”, “It’s not supposed to be fun the whole way through- just think of how good we’ll feel after” & the like. With about 1.5 km’s to go I stopped to stretch again & just tell my brain that this was it. And off we went! And I did enjoy the last leg of the run. I had hoped that Alvin’s basketball game would finish earlier so that he could catch photos across the “finish line”. No luck. The best I can do is to include a photo of “the aftermath”. I think my feet were hardest hit because I spent the rest of the weekend as usual- except that I was busy telling anyone who could hear that I completed my half-marathon. (Oh, & we did it in just over 2 hours which I think must be a pretty slow time- but I don’t care)*muhahahah*.
I don’t think I’ll sign up for another for a while…but this bragging bit is great!
I'll make sure Cody reads this entry Sarah. He will be so proud of you. Better late than never.
ReplyDeleteI am planning to do the Lusaka Marathon on 1st December 2012.
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