San Diego Girls’ Week-End… The Defeat!

Christina is way too excited here!

This post is a little bit off the regular topic, but I wanted to write about it, so please indulge me for a few paragraphs!

Back in August, Christina called and asked me if I’d be interested in a girls’ week-end. I think I said yes before I fully processed the rest of her question, “…to run a half marathon!” I am a woman of my word, and so I began training.

I looked up lots of training plans on the internet, and I found some things that I thought would work for me, and so I started running in the mornings before my husband went to work. I should preface this by saying I’ve never been a runner … ever! I don’t feel the need to spend that much time alone with my thoughts! I basically go to the gym because they have cable, not because I love to feel the burn!

I hate to admit it, but I was kind of impressed with the progress I was making for the first couple of months. In September I managed to run for 3 miles straight, without stopping. It was a personal record, and I knew if I kept up my schedule I would be able to run the 13.1 miles in February.

Then in October there was a kink in the plan … I got pregnant. The pregnancy was completely planned, and I thought that I would be able to make the whole thing work. I would obviously be running a slower race, but I saw no reason that I couldn’t do it. After all, this isn’t my first time at the pregnancy rodeo! This is my 6th kid, and I understand what that means for my body. What I failed to consider was that I hated being pregnant when I was 25, and now that I’m 35 and have 5 kids at home the glow of pregnancy is completely gone!

I continued to train though. As the weather got colder I started going to the gym three days a week. The problem was that I wasn’t making the kind of steady progress that I had been making. I was just plodding along, hoping against hope that I could make this work. Then came January and the mixture of cedar fever and morning sickness. It wasn’t a pretty month for me! Still, in my head I was convinced that it I put in the effort, it would all pay off.

The race was in San Diego on February 9th. Christina picked this particular race because San Diego is supposed to be 72 degrees all year long, and the race was women only on a flat course. Of course, with my luck, it ended up being 45 degrees all week-end (which is apparently not cold if you’re running hard!).

I would like to say all went well with the race, but I was pretty squarely defeated. It started with a sprint to the start (yes, you read that right), and it pretty much went to crap from there! I totally love the fact that my sisters stuck by me the entire time even though that meant Christina’s first DNF (sorry about that!). I will say that it’s a humbling experience to train for something for months and to have it go so bad so quickly. I assumed that if I worked hard I would automatically succeed, but in this case, I have to alter my definition of success.

My brother-in-law reassured me by telling me that I was prepared, in this instance though, the baby won the fight!

Now that I’ve put a couple of weeks between me and the race, the sting is beginning to die down. I’m a little embarrassed to admit how disappointed I was that I couldn’t finish (add that to the worst Scrabble game ever, and you have an idea of my mood that week-end!), but I did try, and that’s important too … right?!

Tomorrow I’ll write a bit about the rest of the week-end. We ate at some amazing restaurants, and really, it can’t be a bad week-end when the sisters get together.