I ran a half marathon today…sort of.

I haven’t had a great half marathon since I had kids nearly 11 years ago. My priorities have changed considerably since having kids but I still love racing. I still love pushing myself as hard as I can and seeing what I’m capable of. I love running, regardless of whether I have a race planned, but having a race planned keeps me through the tough days and gives me something to focus on.

I started training for this half once my youngest started preschool in mid September. I do a slower build up these days because I’ve learned from injury in the past. So I needed the full 10 weeks or so to get in shape to be able to run the time I wanted.

I had one really terrible workout early on that I think was a combination of dehydration and lack of confidence, but the rest of my hard workouts went really well. They were hard- some of them, very hard but I did them with the exception of just that one.

I did many of my long runs in the rain and I touched it out, knowing it would all be worth it. And I got in shape. And I saw what I was still capable of at 40 years old. And, I love it. I love the hard work. I love pushing myself right up to that edge of my limits of my abilities and seeing how close I can get. I love the feel of having tired muscles. I love the sweat, the sucking in air, the mentally pushing yourself to keep going when your body wants you to stop. I even did one of my hard workouts with a migraine. I somehow finished the workout without feeling bad and then about a mile into my cool down the headache and nausea hit.

So by the time you get to the start of a race, you’ve already had quite the adventure. You’ve learned some things about yourself. There were so many times during workouts my pace would suddenly slow and I learned to trust my body more than my watch. Sure enough, 30 seconds later, my watch would recalibrate and I was back on pace.

No matter what happens before that actual race on your calendar, the work you put in is never wasted. You still exercised your body and improved your health physically and also mentally.

The race started off well enough. I found myself going out too fast and having to purposefully slow down that first mile. Eventually I settled in behind this guy with red socks, yellow cap, long beard. A few times I passed him and then shortly after he passed me. We ticked off the next couple miles perfectly on pace so I decided it would be good for me to work with him. Sometimes in these races I end up alone. It’s harder that way because it’s more like a training run. The point of having a race is that there are people around you that can push you to go faster than you would go by yourself. Runners appreciate this comradery. Especially when it’s a man I’m running with because we are not really competitors.

We hit mile 3 and this woman passed us. She was the first woman now in the race. We saw the motorcycle leading the men leader coming back at us, and I saw mile marker #4 for the way back, then suddenly, the woman ahead of us turned around. There was no volunteer or even cones or marks on the sidewalk to designate that this was the turn around. So the guy I had been running with and I looked at each other confused and followed her-figuring she knew what she was doing?

I was going to try to check my watch against the 4 mile marker and see if we were still in line with the course but I somehow hit stop on my watch and didn’t realize it. I ran for a little over a mile without looking at my watch (which is an accomplishment in itself for me that I was just running based on feel for that long, but also frustrating)! When I saw the mile 6 mile marker I realized my watch had been stopped for at least a mile. I was frustrated, but just started it up again and figured I could at least see if I was still on pace-and I was.

The next couple miles I was just running with this same guy, he mentioned he thought we maybe cut off less than 200 meters at that turn based on where the miles we’re hitting but we weren’t sure. I couldn’t trust my watch-such a mess, but we had been consistently hitting pace so I just tried to focus on that.

Near mile 8 we ran into the 5K walkers. There were tons of them and they were taking up the entire path. I tried yelling out “runners!” A couple times and none of them seemed to know what to do. I think we slowed down quite a bit this mile because we were weaving in and around all these walkers for pretty much the entire mile. I was frustrated. I tried yelling a few more times and sometimes they moved over but I ended up running in the grass, on the dirt, etc. I didn’t want to look at my watch because I didn’t want my pace to mess with my head. I took my GU and then a half mile later I grabbed some water at the water station. I stopped quickly and took a couple big gulps and the guy got a little ahead of me because he didn’t stop but I quickly caught back up.

Then we saw mile 9 and Tim and the kids were there cheering for me. I shot Tim a look and he just knew something was wrong but he said at that point I was still perfectly on pace.

We went downhill under a bridge and then right away there was a sign that said 1/2 marathon with cones leading you to the left up the same bridge we had just come down the other side from. He and I kind of stopped and looked at each other and decided this was probably the way to go so we did, and shortly thereafter we saw mile marker 13 and then the finish line. We stopped. He started going back to try to get back on track but I was mad and just done with this race. I went through the finish line and immediately found officials and told them what happened.

In retrospect, I should have turned around with the guy and tried to get back on course. I ended up running into him at the finish later and he still ran on pace and finished in a time I would have been pleased with, despite all the stopping and going back. He said, “you’re super fast, I hope you know that. I ran one of my best times ever and you were helping me.” And this is why I love the running community. Most other runners know what it takes to complete something like that, not just that day, but the months of work leading up to it, and we all want each other to be successful.

I ended up running the full distance of the race afterwards and I went back on the course and saw yet another area where runners were getting confused and didn’t know where to go. And it’s super frustrating for all of them to have that experience.

So I’m disappointed with what happened, but it’s never a total waste. I still ran really hard and I think I could’ve run what I wanted to. There’s no way to know for sure because the last 4 miles of a half marathon are really where the test is, but going off of how I felt at mile 9.5 and how it felt hard but not like I was not going to make it, I think I would’ve been close to my goal.

I still had an adventure and the thing about adventures is that anything can happen. I saw the humanity in another human and that always warms my heart. Tim was so upset for me and I was thankful he brought me to this race and watched the kids and that he was so sad for me. Now I’m going to take some much needed time off of running and try to get caught up on other things and ready for Christmas. Hopefully I’m teaching my kids that life throws curve balls…constantly, but it’s still worthwhile to keep going and run the race well and help out a stranger when you can. We’re all doing our best with the circumstances in front of us.