Let me preface this post by saying, I’m not a “runner.” Yes, I trained for and had run in events, but my body isn’t your typical “runners body.” In fact, I’m overweight, and I crave junk food like a teenage kid. Not to mention, I’ve never learned to “love,” or even “like” for that matter, running. There are so many other things I’d rather do than run down the street and constantly worry about my pace, heart rate, breathing, cadence, etc.
After I trained for and walked in the Avon 39 last year, I decided to set a new goal for myself. Since the Avon 39 consisted of basically walking a marathon + walking half marathon, and I had walked in two previous half marathons, I decided my only next logical step was to train for a RUNNING half marathon. I’m not sure what I was smoking when I decided that, but I dove into that goal headfirst.
I found the Galloway RunWalkRun method and started training for…a Disneyland Half Marathon. I mean, no pressure or anything, right?
Week after week I’d run three days a week–2 shorter runs and a long run. I did this through the hot summer and into the fall. It’s still pretty warm here in October, so I often awoke at 4 am to do my long run. That is until I injured my hip in early October on my longest training run I had ever attempted–8 miles!
I had to put the running on the back burner until I healed which, let me tell you, was not an easy thing to do. I didn’t want to stop training, but my hip and back were working in unison to make running as unbearable as humanly possible.
I turned to yoga to fill the void. I had been practicing quite frequently by this point, but my once-easy-asanas were just as painful and left me incapacitated for days after practice.
That’s when I realized I had to sit the eff down and heal. Taking a break from physical activity, whether due to an injury or just to get our minds right, isn’t always the easiest thing to do. I felt oddly insecure in the fact that I was doing “nothing,” or so I thought.
However, during the healing process, I was able to regroup and reconnect with my body. I worked on stretching and strengthening my back and hips and began long meditative walks.
By the end of November, I was ready to get back out on the pavement. It probably was a little soon, but that first run felt good. Maybe not physically good as I still had hip stiffness that caused my gait to change but, mentally.
From then on, I got back into the groove of running until they canceled the freaking half marathon. To say that I was frustrated is an understatement. I had worked so hard to come back from the injury for what?
After a little pity party, I decided to just take it easy for a few weeks and then start training for the half marathon I had been doing for the two previous years. However, this time I was going to RUN it.
Falling back on my old training program, I started to use the RunWalkRun method again. But, by this time it was January and the winters in northern California equal cold and rainy. So, a lot of my training was on the treadmill. I am NOT a fan of the dreadmill, I mean treadmill. It seriously caused me undue anxiety every time I stepped on it. I kept trying to find ways to make my workouts go faster (which for a 40-minute workout was impossible as no one has figured out a way to speed up time yet).
So, needless to say, my workouts were not fun or inspiring. The only thing that saved my sanity was that I absolutely REFUSED to complete my long runs on the treadmill. That means I was taking my workout to the streets at least once a week. No matter how hilly my routes were, it was still better than the treadmill.
Week after week, month after month I trained for the half marathon. Everything was going great until overreaching set in. When you train long and hard without adequate rest or fuel (running made me seriously HUNGRY all-the-time), it is not uncommon for your body to give you signals that you need to rest. Sometimes it can be in the form of an injury, other times it can just be unrelenting fatigue.
My overreaching came in the form of fatigue and depression. Four weeks out, I no longer had any desire to run or even participate in the half marathon. Never in my life had I ever felt this way about a goal when I was SO CLOSE to that goal. But I just had no energy or desire to train anymore. So after pushing myself through mediocre workouts for two weeks, I just stopped training.
At this point, I had decided I was going to change my registration back to a walkers bib since I obviously wasn’t going to be ready to run a half marathon. So, I started taking longer walks to get my body ready for walking a half marathon. Believe it or not, walking a half marathon and running one takes different forms of training. Where running focuses on two tempo runs and one longer run, walking focuses on endurance and mental stamina.
My plan was to have my bib switched at packet pickup. But something wild happened. I started thinking, what if I WANTED to run a little. In this particular race, there are two routes—one for walkers and one for runners. If you’re on the walker route, you can only walk. If you’re on the runner’s route, you can run, jog, walk. So, I kept the runner’s bib to the shock of my husband and myself.
I had serious buyers remorse at this decision the night before and the morning of the half marathon. What had I done? Even though I knew I could walk it, I didn’t want to be the ONLY one walking it. And what if I came in dead last or worse, slower than last years walking half marathon time?
I think in times like these we are super hard on ourselves when we don’t need to be. There were people in that half marathon of all sorts of skill and ability levels. Some jogged and walked it, others straight ran it, and some just walked the entire way.
In the end, I never was in competition with any of them. I was only in competition with myself. In the end, I impressed even myself with my ability and stamina. I ended up RUNNING nearly the entire half marathon! I started by saying I was going to run out the finish line and then walk the rest. Then when I ran an ENTIRE mile without stopping (that’s uncommon for RunWalkRun method). Then I did it again four more times throughout the half marathon with RunWalkRun intervals on the miles between.
Crossing that finish line was the most amazing achievement (next to becoming a mom of course) that I had ever accomplished. The half marathon wasn’t fast, and it definitely wasn’t pretty, but in the end, I accomplished what I set out to do—run a half marathon. Even though I was slow, I still beat my walking half marathon PR by 15 minutes. So, I feel pretty proud of myself.
So, if you’re thinking of running a half marathon, just do it! Sometimes we need something like a race to remind us how AMAZING we really are.
