Finish what you started

A few months ago, my friend Richard sort of convinced me to do the BAA Half Marathon. After two weeks of travel and less-than-ideal running conditions in Indiana and Louisiana, I was really worried about the race. But the fact that I'm sitting here the morning after is a testament to the statement that you can do anything you set your mind to. I got up early EARLY yesterday morning with the husby, put on my racing clothes, we parked the car in Brookline and took the T in (along with an entire trainful of other racers - never seen so many sets of running shoes in one T car) and found the rest of my racing team. Sidebar: Port-a-potties, at any age, in any situation, are DISGUSTING. I convinced myself that I would warm up and shucked my racing pants and jacket, and at 8am, the starting horn went off. The BAA course is just gorgeous, down the Riverway, Jamaicaway, Arborway, around Jamaica Pond, through the Franklin Park Zoo and then back again. It's a little bit of a thrill to have the roads you drive shut down for you to run. The crowds were great - people coming out of their houses to cheer for the runners, the runners cheering for the elite qualifiers who were SMOKING their distance and the wheelchair competitors as they were on the back end of the 'out and back' leaving us all to wonder exactly how much longer we had until mile 7....

But here's the crazy thing. After my knee started to twinge around m

ile 8 and I realized that I still had another 5K to go, I became kind of numb from the waist down. I would walk through the water stops (as Hal Higdon told me to) so I could guzzle as much water as I could without spilling, and then I just picked right back up again with the running. This is, in many ways, completely different than my normal running routine (run 13 minutes, walk 1 or 2). I decided to see how much I could push myself without really getting hurt. I still believe that the temperature plays the biggest factor. It was 45 when the race started and 55 by the time it was over, so no matter how warm I was, the cold breeze kept me cool and breathing steadily, no stitches in my side or g

asping for air on the uphill turns, none of that. No muscle cramps, no breathing pea soup in humidity. It was one of the best runs I have ever had, all 13.1 miles of it, and I'm still so stoked that I finished, I kind of don't know what to do next!

And now, the proof that is in the pudding - more photos!