Pre-Race Thoughts
On Sunday I’m running the Ft. Lauderdale Half Marathon! I have a little history with this race…. In 2018 I trained for the full marathon. It was going to be my “big comeback”. I ran marathons before my kids were born, but hadn’t run any since then and I wanted to get back to it. My training went well, all the way up through my last 22 mile long run. Then, I was running an easy 12 mile run during my taper and felt a funny sensation in my glutes. Hmmm, that’s odd. I finished that run, but then could barely walk back home. What in the world…??? After an emergency visit to my sports chiropractor, it was determined that it was either a stress fracture in my sacrum (ACK!) or inflammation in my SI joint- either way, due to the searing pain, I couldn’t run and had to miss that marathon. (It turned out to be inflammation and not a stress fracture, phew.) The “funny” thing (not ha ha funny, but the other kind) is that when I registered for that marathon, my husband decided to run the half marathon so we could run together and then he could be there to cheer me on. After he registered, some of his friends registered to run as well. So when race day came around, they all went off to run without me! Sob. Fast forward to the following year, 2019. After recovering from the SI inflammation I had gone back to training, and once again signed up to run the marathon. A couple months before the race, I felt an alarming pain in my hip. This time, I immediately cut back my training and switched from the full marathon to the half. I was a little disappointed about that, but I remembered how I felt the previous year when I couldn’t run at all. I ran the half marathon that year in a time of 1:57, which was my goal. I felt really good about that! It wasn’t as fast as I ran before having kids, but I thought it was a good beginning to getting some speed back. Now, I’m wondering if that post-baby PR will stand forever. For the next three years, various things kept me from running this race. There was Covid, there were injuries, and there was also my belief that you don’t pay $100 to run a race just for the fun of it- you have to train, and have a time goal! If I didn’t feel I could “race” it and have a decent finish time, it didn’t seem worth doing. Then, this year a blogger friend announced that she was coming down to run the race. My husband also expressed interest in running it again, so I reluctantly registered for the half. The thought of running it much, much slower than I did in 2019 was tough to accept. But I knew I couldn’t do any speed work and risk getting injured, because I have a big goal race coming up in April. I wasn’t really looking forward to it, but had already committed, i.e. paid for it and told my friend and husband I would do it. My husband was having trouble finding the time to train properly, and then right when he needed to get in some serious long runs, he got Covid and that was the final nail in the coffin. He was out. Well, that left me and my blogging friend! Except that earlier this week she emailed me to say that after she arrived in Florida, she injured her foot (I’m going to let her tell her own story on her blog) and wouldn’t be running the race. Now, wait a minute! How did I end up running this race alone??? I didn’t even want to do it in the first place! I’m going to have to get up at 3:15 am on Sunday morning, drive down to Ft. Lauderdale by myself, and run this race at a snail’s pace, which I’ve always been opposed to. How did I get myself into this, anyway? Then… I had a major mindset shift. I’m the LUCKY one this time. I GET to run the race, while others are sitting at home. So what if I’m slow- no one cares. Sometimes you can do everything right, and be taken out at the last minute by illness, injury, or a freak accident. I’ve been there. This year, everything came together for me and I get to show up at the starting line of this race, healthy and ready to run. I can’t wait.