I made it…Bearly!
It’s been more than a week since the half marathon in Hendersonville. I am sorry I took so long to update, especially to those friends who funded my run. You’re going to hear all about it now!
As you all know, our beautiful mountains took a hard hit from hurricane Helene in September.
The half marathon (that at the time I was pretty confident I was ready for) was rescheduled for a month later, on November 10. I was determined to show up for this race, even though I had lost a lot of training time to the circumstances. Come Hell or high water, and the Good Lord willing, I was going visit Hendersonville and turn out in support of this beautiful community. The people in these mountains, including myself, are in desperate need of a little normalcy and fun. So I bought a neat tee-shirt to express my feelings on the matter…
…and I toddled my slow, unprepared butt on down the mountains past Asheville to run that race!
There were some challenges, of course. There always are, right? But extra ones, this time. For one thing, I had only had four training runs between the day of the hurricane and the day of the race, a total of maybe 30 miles in the month. I spent some days shoveling mud, some days volunteering at donation sites, some days delivering supplies, and of course I still needed to take care of my own family. My community and family needed me far more than I needed to be out running. Don’t take this to mean that I was being some kind of hero or martyr. I did not do enough, and I’m not done yet! I truly wish I had done more even now, and there are a lot of actual heroes around here who deserve all the praise. I’m a very minor player, I promise. But that was how I’ve had to spend my time, rather than running.
For another thing, I apparently caught a bug of some kind. Maybe I poisoned myself mucking around in contaminated flood mud, maybe I was just stressed out, or maybe I caught what the kids next door had. Whatever it was, I had been feeling nauseated and unwell for the past two weeks, at that point. (I’m mostly better now!) I really didn’t know if I was going to be able to finish this run at all. I tried to keep upbeat about the whole thing, but I was feeling pre-defeated on the drive down.
Though it sounds ridiculous, the worst thing, the one thing in all this that made me almost literally cry?
I packed the wrong socks.
When I was packing for the trip, I honestly just couldn’t get my mind clear on what I was even packing for. Something about a race? Seriously? Now? I managed to grab most of what I needed. At least I packed the right shoes. But I forgot many of the obvious things that one would normally would take on an overnight trip: toiletries, pajamas, laptop, emergency cash. I just didn’t have my head in the game at all.
If you’re a runner, or you know a runner, you likely know what a sinking feeling I had when I opened up the bag of running gear that Sunday morning and saw that I’d grabbed toe socks instead of the conventional socks I normally run in. The only other socks I had were even less likely to benefit me, so I put on the stupid socks.
This was a “can I even make it?” kind of run. As you know, I’m not the fastest, nor will I ever hope to be. But I enjoy the mental and physical challenge of running. I did think there was a chance I’d be close to dead last under these conditions, if I made it at all. But I really didn’t want to have to write that up for all the friends who helped me get here, so I went out there determined to just puke and run, puke and run, if that’s what I needed to do.
Praise the Lord, I can actually say “Yes! I made it!” I came in 249th out of 289 finishers. I am not proud of this, but it is what I could do that day. I didn’t even puke!
First goal cleared!
I had some other goals that were a little less important on this run. But they were more firm, and honestly more likely to fail, I thought. I wanted to beat both my 5k and 10k personal bests in the first miles.
Second and third goals cleared, as well! This, I am proud of! Of course they’re not pro numbers, but they are getting better all the time, and I think I’ll have actually respectable speeds soon.
The one goal I did not meet, of course, was the half-marathon time goal. It was, in a word, abysmal. I had wanted to keep around a 12-minute pace for every mile, which would have put me around 2.5 hours at the finish. That was a modest goal, I thought. I do sincerely, and hopefully without fooling myself, believe that I could have done that back in October, when the original race was scheduled. My training was planned and executed well until September 27th.
I actually kept my planned pace pretty well–though widely varying between 10:30 and 12:30 each mile because I wanted to meet those early speed goals–until about mile 10, when my right foot started to feel the insult of having the toes wrapped individually instead of all in a bundle. I had no choice but to walk a good deal of the last 3 miles. I could still jog a little, but then I had to walk some more. I watched about 50 people of whom I’d felt confident I’d seen the last pass me. I was encouraged by many sweet souls telling me how great I was doing, but I was not. I was not doing great at all.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been that mad at myself. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I know, it’s just an amateur race and I’m nobody to be taking anything that seriously. But this just sucked, ok? I am not angry at myself any more, but at the time, I just could not believe what I’d done there.
But I did finish.
And after I finished, I showered, rested an hour or so, and then smashed this beautiful steak and eggs:
Thanks again, so much, for supporting this run, friends! I pray for each and every one of you to be rewarded tenfold for your generosity in giving to my gofundme. God bless your generous spirits! There will be more races!