The weather gods put on a beautiful day but all morning I had been feeling extremely nervous rather than excited. Did about a 10-15min warm up and then went to line up. As I stood there waiting for the start, my personal trainer happened to walk past me on her way to the front, and a hug from her helped boost my confidence a little bit.
8.45am and off we went. I saw my friend just ahead and I was tempted to sprint a little to catch up to him and say a final good luck as we didn't get a chance before the start, but thought that might be a bit silly literally 100m into the race. Next plan of attack ...get in the zone. All I could think of was how much my achilles already hurt and wondered if it would go away as I warmed up more. I put on some *doof doof* music and hoped for the best. The next 6km went relatively quickly and the pain in my achilles started to fade and I got a pretty good pace on. According to my GPS it was somewhere around the 6:30 minutes per km mark, and on my way to achieving my goal time of 2hrs 20minutes.
Passing a bunch of my friends around the 9km point was a nice little boost..but as I neared the 10.5km turn around point I started feeling tired and the legs were starting to get achey but the fact that I was almost half way through helped , and I was looking forward to the return journey. Put on some even more *doof doof* music to get motivated but things started going downhill pretty quickly. The twinge on the side of my knee started being more and more constant, and I found myself walking more frequently. With only 6kms to go I tried giving myself one last push, really wanting to run to the finish, but suddenly the ache in my leg turned into a sharp shooting pain and my leg buckled under me. A really nice man noticed me stumbling and asked if I was ok..I just about burst out crying but said it was fine.
I did a couple of quick stretches hoping it was something I could release and tried jogging again but no change. Tried power walking to the best of my abilities and felt like a goober.
Being the person I am, I tried attempting to run a few more times .. you know, just in case....but it was getting worse with each attempt so decided for real this time that I had to let my pride and ego go, let go of my time goal and just walk the rest of the last stupid 5kms.
Cue a massive wave of disappointment and realisation that no matter how much I wanted to run, it was just not going to happen. I powered on (walking) with all that I could, went past a couple of ladies who were cheering me on as tears of frustration rolled down my cheeks.
Mentally that was probably one of the hardest 5kms I've ever done. I focused on enjoying the sunshine and the delicious blue powerade (not so delicious by that point!)...and I jogged across the finish line. I couldn't resist.
Of course as soon as I found my family I couldn't hold the tears in. I was reminded that I still did the distance and should be proud of myself and happy, but it was hard to accept that at the time because it kind of just felt like a wasted opportunity. I didn't want to do a half marathon ever again (at least not till Ironmaori).
It feels a bit silly now that I got so upset over it, because it's not the end of the world, my time didn't even end up being that bad, there will be other races and there will be more chances to achieve. I guess it just made it clear to me how much I put into my goals and the expectations I set for myself, but really the only one applying pressure to me, is me.
Life lesson learnt.. let go of things you cannot control. Hopefully this experience is just another thing that will make me stronger.
I am now determined to get my legs fixed and aiming for another half in late September.
If nothing else..this makes me feel like a bad ass athlete with a real injury :)
Now I don't want to be a drama queen but I saw this quote and it really resonated with me, not just about this latest half marathon but it's so relevant to me right now in general. Just have to persevere and keep moving forward.
Thanks for reading :)
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