My Own Brand of Half Marathon

Okay, so I didn't actually run a half marathon. But my pedometer said I did, so for now that's going to have to be good enough for me.

My plan for last Saturday's run was to do a little bit shorter distance than the previous week and substitute in some hills for cross-training.

The run started out very sluggish, despite my excitement. I was, honestly, excited to run. I try to pump myself up all week and continually visualize the run I'm going to do so by Saturday I can actually push myself out the door and do it. Well, I was excited to go, but as soon as I started running my feet felt like lead. That lasted for about two miles and then I finally started to get into my groove. And since I was feeling so very groovy, I missed my turn. And I continued to miss my turn for an entire mile. I didn't realize I had gone the wrong way until I got to the freeway. But I was still feeling pretty good, so after backtracking that entire mile I decided to continue on with my original plan.

I then got lost two more times. I eventually found my route and jogged up the Dish (pretty popular hiking spot on Stanford campus), which has an elevation gain of 500 feet. Not too bad, unless you condense that into a very short distance, and also have already been jogging for 6.5 miles. My original goals of jogging all the way up were not quite accomplished, but I got some good practice walking up steep hills. The most discouraging thing about this run was that my marathon includes an elevation gain of 2500 feet. All I could think was "There is no way I can do my marathon."

Once I got back onto Stanford campus my legs were screaming and my bladder was threatening to burst (gotta love the post-pregnancy perks) and I had to give up my pride and walk. It was actually pretty humbling because it seems such a simple thing to just keep jogging, and at that point I had only jogged probably 9 miles, but I couldn't jog any more. So I walked for about 1.5 miles, thinking to myself the whole time that this was the time to push myself because this was how I would get stronger. But my legs and my bladder were conspiring against me (too much information?).

I did manage to pull myself together and jog very slowly for the last mile (yay, little victory!), but all in all I felt pretty defeated. My pedometer gave me a nice little treat at the end, telling me I had gone 13.38 miles, but alas, it was incorrect. Due to steep hills and quite a bit of walking, the distance was off by almost two miles. That's kind of like running a half marathon, right? I think I might tinker with it a bit more and maybe next week I can do the full marathon in two hours and be done with all this training craziness.

This is how sick I look when I get home. Poor Paul.


And then, because there has to be something cute about this post: