Sunday was my marathon (H ran a half marathon), and even though neither of us have really been running at all since we moved into our new house, we were still excited and ready to go. Even though I knew I wasnt as prepared as I would have liked to be, I still went for it and had a good time.
H and I had to get on the bus at around 6am for a 7:30 race start. It was nice and cool at the beginning, and I grabbed some sunscreen, some energy gels for my race and used the rest room. After that I stood around and stretched for a few minutes then the gun went off. When running, I didnt want to take it out too slow and die at the end completely, so I hung back and quickly found myself in dead last place. I didnt really have a watch, so I just kept plugging away and eventually passed a handful of people around mile 4. Talking to one lady as I went by, she said almost an hour had gone by and I about fell over! Oh crap, I thought, it’s time to stop jerking around and pick up the pace – I wanted to be done by dinner at least. 15 minute miles were nowhere near my pre-race hopeful pace.
I picked it up at that point and was able to get to the half way point by around 10 o’clock, for a 2:37 half marathon. Not bad considering the start, and I still felt good, but it was getting super hot outside, and I just wanted to jump into the river and float into town instead of running. I kept going well until about mile 21, when the course veered off around a corner and up what seemed like a monumental hill – of course, it wasnt, but at this point any slight upslope would have been huge. I made it to the top of the hill, but walked quite a bit of the course after that point. I had wanted to finish without walking at all, but wasnt able to manage.
I finished with a (really slow) time of 6:05, but that’s fine with me. I was able to complete one of my 2012 goals, and now can move on to one of the others on my list. I did learn quite a bit from this run though.
One of the first things that I learned is that if you really want to do something, you have to actually set aside time to do it instead of sitting around with your friends flapping your lips. Anyone can talk about a goal to run a marathon, but not everyone can translate that into running for 10+ hours a week for a few months to make it happen. If you want to accomplish your goal, you need to put in the time – there’s no way around it.
One other thing is that some goals suck even when you’re doing them. I’m not going to sit around and say this race was all green grass, open prarie, mountains and sunshine (Oh, wait – yes it was). The view aside, the race was hard and long and at times not very much fun – but at the end it was pretty awesome.
Readers: how have you been doing on your goals this year? Were you able to cross anything off yet?



