Full disclosure: I have been a solid 3 mile runner for a loooooong time. I’ve ratcheted that distance up to 5 miles every so often, but in terms of longer distances they didn’t really exist. And if you had asked me a year ago if I thought I’d ever run a marathon, the answer would have been a no. I didn’t have anything against the idea, but taking the time to train, hearing about friends who have had to ice their legs after long runs, and quite frankly, the sheer thought of 26.2 miles seemed a little bit…well…unnecessary.
At age 39 and at the end of last August, I turned up pregnant. It was a good surprise. However, knowing I was “elderly primigravida” we waited to tell our many friends and family about my condition. After the obligatory and endless 12 weeks, we started sharing the news and I started to really let the reality sink in that I would be having a baby May 2016. And then in mid-November, I miscarried at about 15 weeks.
Working through those emotions was not easy. On top of raging hormones, I had gained more weight than I would have liked that first trimester, and I started to break out with an eczema-type rash on my face. I cried a lot. Basically, I was kind of a disaster. Luckily, I have coping mechanisms, and those included long (for me) runs on the treadmill on dark and rainy Washington evenings and lots of loud music.
So there I am, running about 6 miles at a time, about 5 or 6 days per week, listening to Rage Against the Machine, and thinking. I thought about a lot of stuff. About the baby, about my husband, about my teenage daughter, about me, about where and how I wanted (the rest of) my life to go, about getting older, about how to get the damn rash to go away, about what to make for dinner, and eventually, I came to the conclusion (among other things) that maybe I should run a half-marathon as a goal. And I decided I wanted to run it in under 2 hours.
I didn’t really think about or research how to train. I just started to try to increase my speed, and I eventually was able to do 6.6 miles on the treadmill (flat mind you), in an hour. I thought, ok – well now you just have to do this for another hour, build up your conditioning, and there you have it. My knee kind of hurt from time to time, though, and my feet in the morning ached terribly so that it hurt to put weight on them. I tried new shoes, and I started to wonder if the half-marathon was a good idea. I did this for a couple of months, and eventually backed down on the runs as my mental state stabilized, my feet kept hurting, and other projects started taking my time.
Then, at a dinner at a friend’s house, I met a woman who runs marathons (among other spectacular things), who is close in age to me, and she invited me to start running with her group of ladies on Sundays. It’s a mixed group of runners, and they typically go 5 or 6 miles, at a 10-12 minute pace. Sometimes if certain people want to go longer, they fix the route so that some people run longer and meet up with those who don’t want to go as long. The terrain and group are varied: trails and road, hills to challenge, and people to chit chat with. A group of real women who run half and full marathons, who have families and work, and who deal with the ups and downs of life and running on Sundays when it works with their schedule.
These women who ran with me told me I could definitely do a half-marathon, and probably could do a full as well. So I signed up for the Seattle half-marathon in November 2016. In the meantime, I have been given encouragement, training books have been lent, distances have been increased (double-digit running: 10 miles! 14 miles!), and I have been given the fantastic fact that I don’t need to run in my training necessarily as fast as I wanted to run in the race. You don’t necessarily want to increase speed and distance at the same time or you can get hurt. Right….gotcha! My feet aren’t hurting, and although I still feel my knee sometimes, so far it’s been manageable.
But a funny thing happened when I hit the 14 mile mark. All of a sudden, I didn’t want to just do a half-marathon. I know I can do it (under 2 hours is still questionable, but distance-wise, I’m there). So, now I have my sights fixed on a full. I’m not sure I will get there. I’m not sure how my training will hold up with consistent longer (15, 18, 20 mile) runs. Heck, I’m not sure how my (now almost-40 year old hanging on to 5 extra pounds) body is going to hold up. And having heard about the hills in the Seattle Marathon, I’ve thought long and hard about what the right first marathon might be (yeah, I’m a wimp when it comes to hills, especially after 10 miles have gone by).
So now I have my sights fixed on the GoodLife Fitness Victoria Marathon on October 9th. There are a lot of good reasons for this choice. Maybe some of my new friends will be racing. Victoria is a beautiful and fun place and I can get there by ferry without having to take my car over. I can maybe treat myself to a tea at the Empress after the race.
And most importantly…the course is supposed to be flat.
crab apple musings 