Warm Up Columbus Half Marathon 2017

You can't win them all.  Or even come close, I guess.

I'm in the thick of marathon training.  It's four weeks until the race which means I have 1-2 weeks of heavy training left.  My body is shattered.  I have back pain that is not going away.  My calves and hamstrings are tight.  I am so tired I could sleep at the drop of a hat.  My mind is fragile.  I'm teetering somewhere between excited for the race and wanting to not do it at all.  I want to quit with every workout I do and yet I'm excited to run every day.  I am a mess.  You would think with this fitness, now would be a good time to run a half marathon.  Except, it wasn't.  My body and my mind just said no and I had to work to finish the race.

 That's me in the grey tank with black arm sleeves and green shoes.

I started off well, maybe even a little too fast.  I was in the 7:30s-7:40s - a pace I should be able to hold.  I was trying to calm down, though, as it felt a little tough and I knew there was a lot of race to go.  With longer training, those first couple miles lie to you, so I kept telling myself that.  Unfortunately, it wasn't until mile 5 that I felt good and also unfortunately, that seemed to be the only mile that felt okay.

You'll see in a lot of these pictures that I'm looking over to the right.  Lots of speculation on Facebook as to why.  It is actually because the husband and kid stayed home and I was hoping they'd surprise me and show up.  I was always looking for them.  I really wanted them there.

In my head I wanted to drop out of this race so badly - at the 5K mark, at the 10K mark.  But the course is a one mile loop you do again and again.  I could talk myself into doing "just" another loop.  

In the last mile I got passed by two women and that didn't make me happy.  I wanted to go with them but I really had nothing left.  In the end I came up 10 seconds short of 10th place and an award.  This may be the first time I've run this race and not gotten an award.  I'm not going to lie, I was super disappointed with this race.  I wanted it to be better.  I wanted to be faster.  I want to look thinner and leaner like I feel.  I want to be fast like those chicks that were whizzing past me.  This wasn't the confidence booster I needed going into the last few weeks before the marathon.

 Don't I look exhausted?

But, the marathon is a different beast and I don't have to run balls to the wall like I do in any other race.  Plus, the marathon is at the beach so there will be other things to see.  And the husband and maybe the kid will be there.  I need my support team. 

Just a few more weeks of focus and then the real goal. 

For bonus blogging points....is this 26point2ers Amy's KOB?  Dude, he was FLYING!!!  He lapped me no fewer than 4 times during the half marathon.