Yesterday my friend and I ran/hobbled a half marathon in Irvine. Had my friend not been in town, I wouldn’t have ran it. But let me back that thang up first….
So we did a ton of fun stuff this weekend… bbq with friends, had other friends spend the night, ran the half, went out to Sunday mexican brunch, went golfing… and I took 0 pictures. Yep, not a single one.
Also, thanks to reader Laura, I think I’ve figured out my thutt pain is piriformis syndrome which is when the sciatic nerve in your butt and thigh is pinched or irritated. So all I can do is stretch it and rest it. I was leaning towards amputation myself, but whatever.
Back to the race:
I wasn’t sure if I could run it or not so I was going to be ok with anything, a DNF or a 15 hour time, it was all gravy baby with me. I take an aleve before the race and another at mile 7. Looking back I should have brought the whole bottle with me; from the first quarter mile to the last, it hurt with every step. The first 7 miles were the worst, then it kinda dulled out for awhile, and then kindly reminded me not to forget about it again.
I ran the first couple miles at 10+ min pace. It was just painful and slow and I wanted to quit, but I imagined I was someone awesome and quitting was someone NOT awesome.
So I kept going and did a couple new things in this race, besides pop pills. I stopped to go to the bathroom, never done that before while racing. super fun and exciting. And I also walked through all the water stations. And instead of kicking, I saw my hubby and went and jumped on him (seriously) right before the finish line. When you’re hobbling slow, what’s another minute?
So I finished in 2 hrs 2 mins, 20 mins slower than my last half. The bummer is that if I were healthy, I think I could have ran it under 1 hr 40, my goal. Oh well, there’ll be another race and another time. The crazy thing is that I ran this race injured in the same time that I ran my 2nd ever half marathon back in November. And at the time, I thought I had flames coming out of my shoes I was going so fast. Funny how your perspective changes.
