Surprise! I'm (half) Crazy.

Surprise!  I ran a half marathon today. 

I know, it's crazy. I guess I'm crazy. Wasn't I just saying that I'd suddenly been stopped in my training? Yup. That's exactly what I was saying.  You may remember that the half marathon I was training for in November was suddenly cancelled. I wrote about it here. Well, after I wrote about it, a very dear, sweet friend who is suffering from a foot injury (on a side note, I think just about the only thing worse than a cancelled race is a race you can't run because of injury), offered me her bib for today's Houston Half Marathon. 

I debated for days about whether to take the bib. I knew I wasn't really in race shape yet. The furthest I'd run was ten miles and after getting over the initial shock of my cancelled race, I have to admit, I'd gotten used to the idea of tapering down for a while. Well, once I made up my mind not to take the bib, I ran it by husband. I presented all of my reasons for not running and without flinching, The Hubs replied, "yeah but you've got nothing better to do that day."  And so it was decided, I was running. 

  

I have to tell you, having only five days to mentally and physically prepare for a half marathon you weren't planning on running is kind of terrifying. To make it worse, I had some medical tests done on Friday that made swallowing pretty excruciating, which made eating no fun, which made fueling properly pretty much impossible. In fact, I spent most of Friday and Saturday curled up in the house feeling lousy.  To say I wasn't feeling at my peak condition would be putting it mildly. 

 The greatest thing happened  though, I had two other awesome friends who were also running. I haven't run with friends in a long time and because I knew that I wasn't that well prepared, I was super excited to have these ladies my my side. 

Appropriate that the start of the race was near a church.  I was praying just to finish.

 

As we lined up in the starting corral, I just assumed we would all take off at our own different paces (I've run with Rachel (on the left) before and she usually smokes me and I knew Danielle was quite the real runner), but as we took off, it was decided we would stick together as long as possible. Y'all, this was the greatest decision!  What a treat to get to spend my morning running and chatting with these ladies!  

The first six miles really flew by.  We kept our pace relatively slow and entertained one another chatting about upcoming trips and work and pretty much anything we could think of. Once we hit the halfway point, we all picked up the speed. We ended up picking it up a bit faster than I normally would have pushed it, but I made up mind to try my best to stick with the girls. As the race went on and our pace continued to pick up, I really started to feel it and as we approached mile ten, the can'ts set in.  Ten miles, after all, was the furthest I had made in in about six months. I began questioning if I would be able to keep pushing for the additional 3.1 miles to come. But that was the beauty of running with the girls, I wasn't going to be the first to slack off, so I just had to suck it up and try to keep pace. A little after 10 miles, Rachel decided to take off ahead. Danielle and I stayed side by side. As things continued getting harder we started talking about all of the food and drink we were going to indulge in after the race. I'm sure runners who were passing us or being passed by us, were really confused hearing things like, "chicken and waffles," "beer," and "mimosas" as they ran. At about mile 12, we caught up with Rachel and the three of us silently pushed on.

We are all faking it in this picture.  None of us were really that happy. 

 

We ran hard together. We ran 'till we puked (well, one of us did - I'm not naming names) and we all finished together. Literally, we all three crossed the line one after the other (each of was a second apart). Even though I was in quite a bit of pain, finishing with friends was so much fun. 

Also fun?  Post run beer!

On a side note, check out how huge my Garmin is.  I know they make must smaller/better models, but this guy works just fine and been on lots of runs with me.  Hard to get rid of him.

 

I'm not going to lie though, I am paying the price big time for running unprepared.  After my post-race cheat (#^*\ the diet after a run!) meal, I've been mostly confined to a horizontal position. My legs are screaming at me and the rest of body is super pissed.  Overall, I'm totally beat.  But, The Hubs was right, there was absolutely nothing better to do today!!