Controversial Race Recap/Motivational Monday!

Happy Monday! Personally, I plan on having a great day! How about you?

I wanted to give a little report on the half marathon this weekend.

But first, let me give you some background:

3 weeks ago, I ran the Women's Half Marathon. I was really surprised with my time, and felt great. I struggled a bit with how to train for 2 races so close together, and the long runs were 8 miles and 5.2 miles.

I was also doing some "single parenting" this weekend. My husband was working out of town and I would be with the kids all weekend. I had a wonderful friend who was kind enough to pick all of us up at 6am Saturday morning, drop me off at the race, and entertain my children while I ran.

However, Friday night, it was hard to convince the little darlings of my need for sleep. I ended up sleeping only a few hours, and doing so very badly.

This is me just before the race. I look so old when I'm tired..

I was optimistic about this race. It would be flatter than my last two (ahem, other two) half marathons, and I thought it would be easier. It was a beautiful day, the weather was perfect, so it started out great...

At mile 1, I was amazed that my Nike + was right on. I mean, the moment I crossed the 1 mile sign, it told me I hit a mile. At the WHM, my Nike + was consistently about .5 miles behind.

A little after 1.5 miles, something weird happened. The group I was with ran into a cross street, and there was another group running on that street. I thought it might be the Fun Run, but these folks all had on Half Marathon bibs. We all kind of looked around confused, and asked the other group where they came from.

Honestly, I forgot about that pretty quickly.

I started to struggle a little bit about Mile 4. I looked at my watch and noticed I was taking a little longer than usual. I wondered why for a second...

At Mile 6 I realized they weren't going to be handing out any Gu. I thought they were, so I didn't bring any. Oh no.

At Mile 8 I wanted to quit. I was uncomfortable. My hip flexors hurt so much. I was still doing my Run 3/Walk 2, but the Running intervals were getting a lot harder...

Before the race, I thought Nicki Minaj's "Superbass" was one of the coolest songs ever. I couldn't get enough of it. By Mile 9 I never wanted to hear it again. In fact, by that point, I hated every song that came on on my playlist.

At Mile 10 I started imagining quitting. I wanted to pull over and let someone drive me back to the finish line. I thought how much I hated running and never wanted to do it again. But the thing that kept me going was that my kids were waiting for me at the finish line. I wanted them to have the chance to see me finish.

I actually stopped to stretch sometime around this point. I never do that. But I thought maybe it would help. It was hard to run after that.

Somehow I muddled through the last 3 miles. It seemed like it would never end. I literally felt like I had been running for days. It reminded me of the 3 day labor with my son...

But I turned a corner and I could see the finish line. I stepped it up and ran as impressively as I could. My chip time was 2:37:54.

It took a while to find my kids. I gorged myself on a cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter. But my son gave me a kiss and told me he was proud of me, and that was the best thing in the world.

Here he is, ready for the race, with a beverage and everything..

But there's more..

Let me tell you about this lady. I don't know her name, but I see her a lot. I see her at all the running events; I see her on the track or the trail sometimes. She carries oxygen with her while she runs. Well, we had packed up and were driving to Starbucks (because I had promised myself a Salted Caramel Mocha). The course was pretty much closed. But there was that lady, giving it everything, all by herself, with her race number and her oxygen. She was determined, and she was going to finish. I was suddenly very inspired.

You know, you see these people who make it look so easy. They speed by you and finish early, and then while you're struggling to finish, they pass you with their medals on while they walk to the car. Well, this lady inspired me more than they did. Sure, the people who make it look easy are working too, but something about this lady.... I got a little teary.

So later in the day, I hear about the "Controversy". I had forgotten about the weirdness around 1.5/2 miles. But apparently, some people were directed the wrong way. Here's what I got from the race folks:

As many of you are aware, there was a misdirection error between Miles 1 and 2 that may have lengthened your run. We have no way of determining which runners were affected, but if you ran down Fairview Street rather than East Street, this involves you. We have calculated the extra distance that some of you ran.  The additional mileage is .409 miles.

So, I really don't know if this affected me or not. On one hand, my GPS was right on. But, on the other hand, it's *never* right on. Even if I *did* run an extra .409 miles, I still didn't PR. Of course, if I had run less, maybe I would have. But that's just on of those things you'll never know.

I *do* know these things, though:

1. I will not be running more than 4 miles at a time for the rest of the year.
2. I'm redoing my playlist.
3. I will *alway* have Gu.
4. My kids are awesome.