Yesterday I was in fabulous Toledo, Ohio to run the Glass City Half Marathon. This is the second year I have paid lots and lots of tolls as I drove through Chicago (painful), trekked across northern Indiana (boring) and rambled into Ohio (lots of cops on the turnpike) to test my 13.1 mile endurance in the Glass City.
I love this race.
It's flat, well-run, has plenty of port-a-johns, a great atmosphere, has no confusion about where to go on the course whatsoever, and is an overall beautiful run. It's also freaking huge, with 2500 people in the half-marathon alone (they also have a 5-person marathon relay and a full marathon), which means I am free from worrying if that woman who just passed me looked like she could be in my age group. I know I have no chance in hell for any kind of award, so I can just focus on the goal I came with instead of constantly worrying about what everyone else is doing around me. (I never know why I worry so much about the people that pass me early in a race, anyway; I usually see them again at the end.)
But I am primarily in love with this race because it was my very first half-marathon ever, running in it a year ago.
During that race 365 days ago, I was determined just to have fun, relax, and finish without looking like a complete moron. So, of course, I started out way too fast for my level of fitness at the time, and ended up with tight screaming thighs by the time I hit the water station at mile 7. ("Screaming Thighs" would be a good name for a band.) I walked through all of the water stations after that, having a hard time getting going again each time. I eventually had to stop and stretch a few times in mile 10, and began to become very frustrated at my throbbing right toe, wondering if it would ever shut the hell up even though it was my fault for wearing a brand new pair of shoes I had never ever run in before that day. After my toe starting expressing its displeasure with me, other body parts began to chime in, asking me what the hell I was doing up there making them run for this long dammit.
But I was still in good spirits, and when I hit the 12th mile marker I started screaming like a crazy woman (because, up until that moment, I hadn't ever run more than 11 miles), mainly shouting "ONE MORE MILE!" These utterances officially ruined my goal of finishing without looking like a complete moron. They also earned me some very dirty looks from everyone running around me, who all looked as if they were going to stop, sit down, and start crying if anyone standing still on the side of the road told them one more time "GOOD JOB! ALMOST THERE!" It was there that I learned that not everyone is jubilant when they near the end of a half marathon.
But I didn't care. I was happy. I was excited. I just paid for the privilege of running 13.1 miles on streets and paths I could run on any other day for free. But on any other day I wouldn't have received a medal, a mug, or the joy of crossing a finish line and collapsing in a heap afterwards in the middle of the University of Toledo stadium, totally satisfied with a time of 2:12:37.
This year I came to this half with a very different goal in mind.
You see, I've run a lot more since that first half marathon--four more half marathons, to be exact. And I struggled to run each one in under 2 hours--which I finally did in November of 2011, coming in with a time of 1:57:48.
I needed to know that the first sub-2 hour time wasn't just a fluke. I needed to know I could do it again.
I had put in the time and the training for this year's Glass City Half Marathon, but I found my brain second-guessing my body's capabilities as I plowed my way through the starting line pack of people, meandering my way back towards the 9:00 pace sign. My goal pace was 8:50, but I was beginning to get scared. What if I couldn't run that pace for 13 miles? What if the shin splints that had been plaguing me all week flared up with a vengeance? What if the slight injury to the ball of my right foot came back to haunt me (caused by stupidly wearing crazy dress shoes to work the week before my half)? "What if" after "what if" ran through my head as I stood there freezing my ass off in my compression shorts and knee-socks and obnoxiously-patterned purple running shirt, not having had time to do any warm up because I was too busy doing nothing standing in line for the port-a-john.
Then I thought, "Well, what if you freaking NAIL IT?" At that moment, the gun went off.
The miles flew by this time. This is probably because I already knew the course, and also probably due to the Garmin Forerunner 305 on my wrist--which I looked at every 3.5 nanoseconds. I'm surprised I stayed on the course seeing as I barely looked at it most of the time. This describes pretty much what happened every 5 minutes during this race: "Run run run What pace am I at? *checkwatch* I better slow the BLEEP down run run run What pace am I at? *checkwatch* Damn I REALLY have to slow down run run run How many more miles? *checkwatch* Seriously, legs, let's slow down now....."
I was constantly surprised to see that my pace was not 8:50. It kept hovering at about 8:30. I willed myself to slow down, but my legs were, as usual, having none of that "slowing down" crap. I'm glad for that, seeing that when my watch alerted me that I had indeed run 13.1 miles, my time was 1:52:40. (The course was long at 13.35 miles; my official time was 1:53:47.) I also realized that my thighs were screaming again, but at least they remained quiet until the end of the race this time around.
But I had freaking nailed it. Those thighs could scream all they wanted to now.
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