The Forest of Nisene Marks and my first half marathon

Last Saturday I woke up early and drove for 75 minutes to get to The Forest of Nisene Marks in Aptos. It was a foggy morning but there was no rain, which turned out to be a good thing because we ran nearly the whole way on a dirt track. I showed up feeling a bit nervous about the foreboding hills and the state of my shin. Luckily though, early on I caught up with a couple of other runners who were happy to share their stories and chat a little bit to pass the time.

The first 3.5 miles weren't too steep, a fact I appreciated at the time (but regretted later). The forest was peaceful and calm and the overhead canopy of trees provided shade. The conversation was good and distracting. It wasn't long though before we hit the upward slopes. And boy did they live up to the apprehension in the eyes of those who had been here before. We were passed by several cyclists who tried hard to make believe they had yet another lower gear. I felt my heart race and sure enough the numbers on my heart rate monitor soared. We gave up and walked a little. Surprisingly, I was ready before the others to try to push a little again, and so passed the next hour and a half.

In my head I was aiming for 12 miles rather than the total of 14 that everyone else had in mind for the day. Most of the people I'm training with are running in the San Diego marathon 3 weeks before mine at Seattle. When I got to the six mile turn around though, I still felt pretty good. I took a quick assessment of my body and my energy and decided to push on to mile seven before turning around. Having to make the decision about whether to run 12 or 14 miles is very different when you make that decision at mile 6 versus at mile 12.

So up I went. People began passing me on their way back, flying down the hill, as I continued my walk/run/plod uphill to the mile marker. When I made it to mile 7 I was over the moon. The way down was a lot of fun at first. Having to run so slowly on the way up and walk so often was disheartening, but now I was flying. My speed picked up and suddenly I knew what it felt like to be able to run fast, for your feet to want to make each step, instead of having to conjole them every time. I spent 5 glorious minutes engineering a treadmill in my head, that sloped forwards but moved backwards, so that I never had to run uphill ever again. The next 3 miles were a blur. I very slowly lost full control of where each footstep landed. Everything went into slow motion from my brain's perspective as my body hurtled down the mountain. The only thing I was conscious of was the 'Bam, Bam' of each footstep hitting the ground. Until it all came to a halt with 3.5 miles to go. Those wonderful flat miles at the beginning were a bain at the end. By now I was thoroughly exhausted. I had really just been holding on for the last few miles, not in control. Now I was back to having to convince my feet that they wanted to make each step and I really wasn't sure I wasn't going to make it. I was rethinking the decision to attempt to run 14 miles. I counted each. and. every. step.

The water stop showed up at mile 12 and when I saw it, I thought I would just walk the last 2 miles. That's what I had intended at the beginning anyway, right? No harm. I was just being silly trying to do 14 before I needed to in the training... But once I had a bit of a rest and a drink of water, I couldn't really face walking all the way home. I got back on the road and waddled (you couldn't really call it jogging, definitely not running) all the way back to the finish line. When I crossed the 13.1 mile point, all I could think was, "This is HALF the distance I have to run on race day." Oh dear. I'd say it took me 3 minutes to forget all the pain and intense self-talking that went on and to simply relish in my achievement. I called home excitedly, "I ran FOURTEEN miles!!!"

Now this weekend I'm competing in my first half marathon event. Runkeeper has a brilliant option to allow people to track your run live on the website. When I get started I'll send a quick tweet to let people know and then you can track my progress over the course of the 13.1 miles. It's amazing to me that even though I just recalled the pain and agony of last weekend I am still brimming over with enthusiasm for tomorrow. I'm off now to pick up my packet with my race number and electronic tracker to make sure they correctly record my time. If I make somewhere in the 2.5 hour range I'll be happy.

Wish me luck!