This is a guest blog apperance from my little sister Shelby- who decided to finally join the Andersen bandwagon and run a 1/2 marathon… wait for it, before you know it she will be rockin the 26.2.
I guess it’s appropriate that I’m writing my very first blog about my very first half-marathon. I am the black sheep in a family of runners. The very last to run a big race, 13.1. I didn’t want to be the only one to say that I hadn’t done it, which is a big reason of why I ran. When I signed up several months before the race I had every intention of training and being totally prepared. Alas- my lack of motivation got the best of me and I ended up with almost zero training. I’m going to go ahead and advise this as the OPPOSITE of what you should do. It makes for a very long and difficult race, and a pretty miserable rest of the day.
Race day we were up bright and early. It was FREEZING and I wasn’t a happy camper but, once the sun came up it started to warm up a little bit. I met up with my friend, Chelsea, in our start corral. Coencidentally she had not trained either so we pretty much decided to stick together the whole race. Once we got going the first 6 or so miles were a breeze for me. Once we got past that point things started to change. It got hard, and easier, and hard…. back and forth. I found that it’s good to have a running buddy when you plan on pushing yourself…. because you can push each other. Our goal was to run the whole thing without stopping- even if we were running slow. And we did run slow towards the end, I remember thinking at one point that I feel like I look like an old woman. Weather conditions ended up being PERFECT for running. It rained just a little bit and it was overcast.
Near the end of the race I can’t tell you how much I wanted to stop and walk…. and if you are a runner yourself you KNOW that feeling. My knees hurt so bad, my stomach hurt and after a couple of hours you are just OVER IT. I think a huge thing that got me through towards the end was that I wanted to finish and be able to say that I did it and I ran the entire thing. So- I DID IT. I ran the entire race- crossing the finish line at 2 hours and 38 minutes. What a great feeling !! And although during the end of the race I swore I’d never do it again…. I think I might.
– Shelby
