Kelly and the Battle of (the half) Marathon

        Today was the big day. No, you don't understand. It was a BIG day. Actually, let me try to use a bigger font to show how much of a big day it was. It was a BIG day. There, that should do it.

 I've spent the last three months training for a half marathon. I followed the Hal Higdon program as closely as I could (there was a minor interruption for sickness, but mostly all went well).

My training often made me look like an idiot (running circles around my 2 km block. People would see me 8 or 9 times, just running in circles) and looking like I didn't know how to pace myself when I would sprint 2 minutes and then walk for a while.

But it all came down to today. Today was the day.

It was time to battle the Half-Marathon.

And what a day for a battle it was. It's 20 degrees (celsius) here. That's about 68F. So a bit hot for a race, but there were tons of water stations.



The race started and I felt great, well as great as you can feel when you're facing the task of running 21 KM (13.1 miles). I was clever and went out slow, and everything went great until about 17km in. And then that stupid little voice showed up.

You know that little voice. The one that tells you to stop doing whatever you're working on. That stupid voice shows up at all the wrong times.

And this time, it was telling me it was ok to walk.

4 KMs (2.5 miles) left and it was telling me just take a break. Just a tiny, little walk break. It didn't even have to be longer than a minute. Then I could run again.

But there was that other voice. The other voice that knew my goal. That goal to run every single step.

And this time...The good voice one.

I ran every, single step of that half marathon. It hurt. And sometimes I would have been walking faster than I was running. But I had a goal. And I was going to make it.

And I did.

I'm really, really excited that I met that goal I set out to do over three months ago. But hot damn, I am so glad that I can stop training, take a break, and just relax.

Here's my happy face!

In NaNo news, I'm still going strong. My MS isn't as good as I was hoping for, but I have a ton of ideas of how to improve it and I'm excited to do that sometime next year.  I'm currently just over 32,000 words and pretty happy with my progress :)