I ran a half marathon. No big deal.

Sunday, I ran the Scotia Bank Half Marathon. I still can't believe I accomplished that goal.


My weekend started with a little bit of this...




And this for our neighbour's kids...




But then it was on to the main event. Was I prepared? No. Had I run the full half marathon distance before? No. Did I only get 4 hours of sleep? Yes!

I was up quite late on Saturday watching SNL. I think part of me was looking for an excuse not to run the next morning because I wasn't feeling prepared and was nervous that I wouldn't be able to finish. I finally went to bed but had the hardest time sleeping. I woke up with enough time to eat and get myself to the event but when I got to the subway, all of the doors were locked. I looked at the sign and it said the station was to open at 5:48 am. I waited until 6:30 am before calling home in a panic, worried I wouldn't be able to make it to the race in time. Luckily, I live with a pretty incredible guy who go out of bed and drove me to the event with enough time to spare! PHEW
(looking back, I was looking at the station times for Saturday and not Sunday's 8:45 am opening time...sleeping more than 4 hours is good for you!)




As the race got started, I felt good. By mile 2, I started to doubt myself. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to make it and was questioning why I had even gone. I decided to break up the race into thirds and focus on 1 third at a time. I found that to be really helpful in keeping my focus and calming my state of panic.

Luckily, the weather was incredible. Even better than the weather were the volunteers and people on the sidelines. I can't get over how nice and positive everyone was. It made me a little emotional having my name be called out by strangers encouraging me to keep going.

By mile 10, my body was shutting down. It felt like I had sprained something in my foot, my thighs were on fire but for some reason it felt better to run than to walk. My overall time was much more than I had hoped but I am just happy and grateful to have finished and have my very own medal to prove it!

I will definitely be running next year's half and I'm hoping to complete my first full marathon in the next 2 years.

Congratulations to everyone that was out there September 26th, 2010.