Ran a Half-Marathon Today!
So i woke up this morning in my bed back at home (San Diego) and...NOPE. Back hurts too much, stay in bed, don't go running. After slowly and painfully crawling out of bed I unrolled a yoga mat and started stretching, hoping to ease some of the pain away. My mom told me there was no way I had a herniated disk, so of course - in my great wisdom - took that as my excuse - or rather lack of an excuse - not to go running.
So there I was with my strained back, as stiff as my... I can't sit or lay comfortably, and can strand straight up, but hell, who the hell does that running, right? So I drive over to the last place I was most in shape in my life: The Lake Murray Reservoir:
Around it, a 5.5 mile, well-maintained asphalt road. The beauty of it was not the nice view of the lake, mountains, or foliage; it was the fact that it does not make a complete loop. You get to the end of the 3.2 mile loop one way (1/2 a lap) and have to turn around. Many people think this sucks. I think its perfect. Because you get to the end of the road and say, "Well, I'm not getting back to my car any faster, so now I have to turn around and run to get home." In a sense, it forces you to run longer. Evil, but clever.
So at the end of my first lap (~5.5 mi) I'm feeling pretty good. So I do something I normally don't do, which is get to the end of the road and turn around a keep on running. About halfway through my second lap (~6-6.5 mi) my left knee is beginning to hurt. I adjust, and then my left ankle starts to hurt. "Fuck it," I say, and kept on running. Eventually the pain went away, and fortunately my shins didn't hurt at all - strange, considering I have really bad shin splints on my left leg. This is all while my back is straining to stay in a comfortable posture, so I can't bend too far back, nor twist my torso at all. So at around 11 mi I'm closing the second lap, and I feel like absolute shit. My groin muscles, having never been stretched before a run, were beginning to become uncomfortably sore. But 11 miles in and you're so close to 13.1 that the pain is tolerable. I just wanted to be able to say I ran a half-marathon on a whim made the night before, as part of a training run for a half marathon coming up in December. Well here it is, the fruit of my labor. Proof
There it is. Everything I worked for. Recorded. Two and a half-laps around this beautiful lake, and where does it all end? Where does my half-marathon finish? On the fucking side of the lake opposite my car. Like I said, evil, but clever.
But I'm still running my two half-marathons in December. Now it is no longer a matter of IF I can complete. Now its just a game of dwindling my time down. I'm going to shoot for 1:40 in December. Just watch me.
