ready or not...

I've kind of been wanting to talk about my half marathon training.
Since my race is tomorrow (!!!!)
There are a lot of words in this post, and most people probably won't care about what I have to say. But I care, because I have been thinking about running a lot over the past year.

Before the 5K, one year ago

Last January we went down to support my mom and brother running this very same race, while we did the 5K. It sparked something in me. I've done two half marathons in my life, both when I was 16, within 4 months of each other. Then I lost the spark. I had a stress fracture, or tendinitis, or something in my foot and I lost the desire to run. 1 year ago, I got it back. And I really started trying.

It was a battle the whole year. I have ITBS, (IT band syndrome) which means that the outside of my knee hurts WAY bad when I run. I've literally spent all year getting it under control. When I started last January, I literally could not even run 1/2 of a mile. I worked SO hard to stay positive, and I ran every day, even when it less than half a mile. I got super good at stretching and foam rolling.

First 5 mile run in years

Things slowly started to improve. I think it took me 4 months before I could finally do a 3 mile run. That was my long run. And I stayed at 3 miles for a couple of months. I hit a wall and could not seem to get past it. Finally one day I said, "I'm running 4 miles." And I did! And then the next week we did 5. I took it super slow. I didn't add mileage every week. I stayed in the 5-6 range for a couple of months, then finally hit 7. I felt this incredible sense of accomplishment. Look at what I was accomplishing! at the beginning of the year, I pretty much couldn't run at all. And now I could consistently do 3 and 4 miles with a 6 or 7 mile long run every week.

Then the IT band started hurting again. I had gotten lazy with stretching because my knee wasn't hurting anymore. Boy do I want to go back in time and slap myself in the face because the past 5 months have been so rough when it comes to running. So I slowed down again, iced like crazy, got into a good stretching and roam rolling routine and just worked through it.

I am SO proud of myself that I didn't give up at this point. Because it would have been really easy to! I had a lot of really hard runs. I texted Kevin a lot of "thumbs down" pictures afterward. But he always encouraged me and helped me work through it. My wonderful husband has been the greatest support system ever.

Finally I got to 8 miles. I started feeling really confident. Then it got really cold, really fast. Running outside was miserable, no matter how much I bundled up. I always carried water until it started freezing. And once my eyelashes froze I knew it was time to run inside.

 I did my 9 mile long run and my 10 mile long run inside at the BYU track. I would run 2 miles on the track and then 1 mile on the treadmill until I was done. Those were hard long runs. I usually would cry in relief when I finished. But I knew I was going to get there.

The weather warmed up a bit and I decided to do my 11 mile long run inside. This was three weeks ago. The weather was perfect for running. I had ZERO IT band pain which was amazing. I felt incredible. I wanted to run forever. For the last three miles I noticed a pain in the back of my knee/top of my calf. I could still run through it so I just kept on running (with IT band pain, you can't run through it no matter how bad you want to. Your body won't let you).

I think I ended up pulling a muscle in my leg that day on my run because for the next two weeks I couldn't run at all. Not even a little bit. It was the most frustrating thing in the world. I would go out, run hardly at all and then walk home, in shame. I cried a lot. I got so frustrated. I decided to take a week off.

The week off saved my strained muscle, but it introduced another problem. Now my IT went crazy. With my IT band, it's so counter intuitive because resting does not help, running consistently does. So this past week has been interesting. I never ran more than 3 miles, and actually I only did that once. Every other day has been the elliptical.

The moral of the story is, I'm running a half marathon tomorrow. And I have no idea how it's going to go. More than likely, I will have to walk a lot of it. More than likely, I will be in a lot of the pain the entire time. But you know what? I am going to FINISH gosh dang it! I have worked so hard all year, and it's time to prove myself. Even if I'm slower than molasses the entire time.

Prayers will be appreciated friends!