THE BIG RACE

So April 12th has been in the back of my mind for months now as one of the scariest days I had to look forward to. For some crazy reason I decided I could just do a twelve week training program and then go walk a half marathon. I have never even walked a 5k or really walked more than in the grocery store for about seven years. Actually it has been almost seven years to the day. On March 19, 2001 I tore my achilles tendon and was pretty active prior to that. I would say my active days came to a screeching halt. Since then, as my activity went down, my weight flew up and I have found myself in a quandry. How do I reverse the trend? I needed this race. It has caused me to exercise regularly with milestones that were amazing to achieve and they just kept getting higher and higher. Even when I was a varsity basketball player I would never have imagined that I could walk 13.1 miles. I was so excited to see my body respond to the training. I was scared to death to do the race. I have never been a quitter, NEVER. I didn't want this to be the first time I HAD to quit because I couldn't do it. I was so glad to have two friends with me to keep me going.

I was so mean to Eldon the night before that I stayed downstairs downloading songs onto my new iPod for the race while he watched TV upstairs. I was so scared. He bought me the iPod because deep down he really didn't think I would do it. That morning I woke up and showered, stretched, had some eggs and a protein shake. I drove over to Emilia's house and then stretched some more. We went downtown and I made Emilia park illegally so we would be closer. I didn't realize it was illegal until we went out to pay and there was no place for us to put in our money because we had made up a spot. I remember seeing all these people running before the race started and I was totally confused. Why would you run before the run? I was nervous that I had to walk to get to the race. I knew there were only so many steps in me and I of course was analyzing how much more difficult this would be for me with the added steps from the car to the race. I was pleased when we got there to see that I wasn't the fattest person walking and in fact there were many large ladies doing it.

I got really pumped when it got started and off we went. It was nice to chat with the girls for the first few miles. We in fact walked a really fast first mile, but got progressively slower by the time we reached 8 miles. We went from fun downtown to crappy downtown and the wind picked up and it just about kicked my rear end at this point. We all started talking about how we were hurting and I knew it was going to be a beast from this point on. Once we got to ten miles, I realized I was in unchartered territory. I had only walked ten miles in training and I still had three to go. I was really starting to notice every joint and muscle pain. I decided I needed a change and put on my ipod. It was amazing! Just having the music took my mind off of my body and how far I had to go and allowed me to focus on the crazy words of Aerosmith. I was so glad that they came up first in the file. I started walking to the beat rather than to where I had been and wow, I started flying. I then realized that if I kept going faster, I would be done faster.

There was one major hill at the end that I slowed down on, but then I started passing people right and left. We came flying in at the end at 3 hours and 41 minutes. I had never thought I could come in under 4:20. So the moral of the story is JUST DO IT!! Nike has it right. You can do anything you put your mind to it. Even someone like me can walk a half marathon. It has truly inspired me to push my body. I can do it. The truly unfair thing about all this is I gained a pound after the race. RUDE!!