Huntsville Half Marathon

Those who know me well or live near me now know that I have always wanted to run a marathon. You may also know that I have a very difficult time losing baby weight and it really depresses me if I don't get it taken care of. Although I was much more vigilant during Scarlett's pregnancy than I was with Nate's I still had some extra weight after she was born. Robert and a friend, Myles, were planning on running a half marathon so I thought that would be a good place for me to start as well. It was a tangible goal and I figured it would keep me motivated in times of difficulty. So I started training. I worked out 6 days a week, 4 of which were on a treadmill because it's so blasted hot and humid here. Anyway, I dedicated myself for a few hard months and on Saturday morning found myself in Huntsville gearing up to run the half marathon with Robert.
Robert before. He does this all the time and wasn't even nervous. I got more and more anxious to start. By the time we were at the starting line I just wanted to get it over with.

Me before. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

Robert and I approaching the finish line. He stayed with me the whole time even though my pace is excuiatingly slow for him. He really pushed me at the end. Miles 11-13 were miserable and I just glared at him every time he morphed into a cheerleader. I thought I had prepared but there are no hills here in Houston where we trained and the race was constant hills. None were huge awful hills, but they were just one right after the other for the whole race. That really worked me. Afterward, I just sat down and felt sick. I got an awful headache. Robert was all smiles and went around eating as much as he could from all the vendors. The last thing I wanted was food. Myles finished way ahead of us and took all our pics for us. His wife watched our kids while we ran. It was so fun to have them there and we couldn't have done this without them.

After resting and showering I started to feel much better. I was so excited to get something it eat at that point. We went to lunch and I had my first milkshake is who knows how long. I usually try not to eat like that but I figured after burning around 1500 calories I could eat what I wanted! I didn't get too sore until Sunday afternoon. My quads got really stiff. When I look back at it I think my body fared pretty well. The only casuality was my second toe on my left foot. I am for sure going to lose the toenail.

I did learn some other things while I was running the race. One is that I know now that I have NO desire to ever run a full marathon. Second, I was always impressed with Robert and his ability to run marathons and do so well and enjoy it, but now I'm way beyond impressed. Third, I am not a runner. I may do it for exercise but I am not built for it and I will never ever be competitive. Finally, if I ever run one of these again it won't be for a while. I'm more than happy to do the shorter 5K or 10K races but this is a once a year sort of thing!