not so fun run

i am a blogger again! watch out posterity!

last week, i ran my first half marathon in a really long time. like 4 years long time. a half marathon is my yearly goal, so i've attempted training for one each year, but due to moving, having a baby and a traumatic delivery, buying a new house, having a family and life and finding a race that i could run on a saturday, it took 4 years to be ready. the race i finally settled on is the run town usa half marathon in greenville, south carolina. say what? haven't i run that one before? yes! but i don't live in greenville anymore! correct! but, it was the most feasible saturday race. i found another one in october in atlanta, but it was on the other side of the city, and it would have taken an hour and a half to get there. greenville is an hour and a half away from this side of the atlanta, so it made some sense to make a family trip of it and get a hotel in downtown greenville the night before. we love greenville and the excitement and novelty of having the entire family "sleeping" in a hotel room never loses it's luster. 

the night was unusually uneventful. herch fell asleep in the car and stayed asleep during the car to hotel room transfer. to successfully transfer a sleeping toddler is to see the face of God. 

then, about 10 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off, scarlett woke me up with a, "mom, herschel opened the door and ran down the hall!" though my day included quite a a bit of high intensity cardio, at no point was my heart beating as hard and as fast as that moment then. luckily, he hadn't made it too far. just all the way on the other side of the hallway.

"dad, i know why mom is taking so long in the bathroom this morning. she's looking in the mirror and giving herself a pre-race pep talk."

that i was, among other pre-race rituals. some involving boudreaux's butt paste. 

the beautiful greenville drive stadium at sunrise. i once read a quote about running and i can't remember the exact words, but the message was along the lines of running as the sun rises allows you to be able to experience dreams that sleep won't allow. 

one of my favorite simpsonvillains, holly, also ran. she ran amazing and PRed. i felt like i had ERed at the end of my race. as in, take me to the ER, my head needs to be examined.

in short, it was beautiful run(i ran past my dream house and i almost completed stopped to stare at it. black on black with shingles and black shutters and a huge porch and lots and lots of huge palmettos and evergreens and regular trees changing purple, red and orange. it was my design aesthetic heaven). the weather was perfect. mid 50s. one of my feet  and my sciatic nerve had been hurting a bit in the weeks leading up to the race but i wasn't too worried. for 3 weeks before the race, i didn't squat anything too heavy and babied my feet with comfortable, unattractive shoes. one of the comfortable shoes gave me a blister a few days before the race. i started off the race okay and had a great time at 3 miles and a really great 6 mile time. i was feeling positive. then about mile 7, i could feel a blister right on the ball of my foot starting to rub. i tried changing my gait, but short of only hopping on one leg, there was no way to avoid that blister.  one dumb blister and i let my brain believe i couldn't do it. i kept going, but i was doubting myself the whole time. everything "they" say about running being a mental exercise is true. i believed i was struggling and so i did. the course wasn't nearly as hard as some of my practice runs, just unfamiliar, so i wasn't running confidently. i was about 15 minutes slower than i anticipated being and it was my slowest time ever. it's fine. i finished. i didn't cry about it. i wore my medal and i ate mexican food with the family on the way home and we all enjoyed each other's company. we arrived back home just in time to watch georgia stomp their way to victory all over florida. i ate so many sour patch watermelons. i really love sour, sugary candy. 

i'm not hanging up my sneaks yet. i'm going to train harder and smarter. i'm going to feel great about my next race's finish. 

 believe it or not, i thought my muscles would be more impressive in this photo. years of lifting and i'm still wowing just my mom.