Have you ever gotten an idea to do something that sounded awesome in the beginning, but the closer you draw to the point of no return, you wonder if you've lost your mind? You spend months preparing yourself mentally and physically until you fool yourself into thinking you're prepared...until the day arrives. Now you may think I am talking about childbirth, but I'm not. Somehow this spring I managed to talk my husband into thinking that doing a half marathon with me would be a good idea. I know. My powers of persuasion astound even myself!
We ran a 10k last summer and survived, how much harder would a half marathon be? Do the math. It's twice as far. It could be A LOT harder! And this is not an ordinary road race. Oh no! We sign up for an extreme trail run. This translates into a lot of steep uphill climbing on rocky, sometimes treacherous, terrain. I lost count of the number of times I tripped and stumbled over a rock or a tree root, but I do know that I only fully wiped out twice!
Oh, it was all fun in the beginning...if you think running is fun, which I only do about a quarter of the time. The first couple weeks of training, the furthest I ran was only about four miles. In the beginning that was plenty. Very quickly, the distances got longer and I began to question whether or not this was something I really should be doing. I'm not sure if my body was designed for this. But did I listen to that little voice telling me this was not a good idea? Noooooooooo! (Imagine I said that in the sing-songy, I-told-you-so way) The deadline for the early-bird pricing was approaching and I went ahead and signed us up. We were now financially committed.
I gutted out the rest of the training schedule. I made it through. So...I can do this, right? Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. The last long run was 10 miles (3.1 miles short of the full race distance). I had to cut it a little short when I looked up ahead and I saw a skunk between me and my turn-around point. Nuh uh! Screw that! I high-tailed it back and I finished it with a very limited amount of soreness. Ok, not quite 10 miles completed. On race day the pumping adrenaline will push me through the last few miles, right? Right?!!!
So the night before the race, I print out the waivers we must sign and turn in before the race. Here is just a little excerpt of what I was insane enough to sign:
I realize that the course for the Dances With Dirt (DWD) race presents a number of potential dangers to me and I hereby assume the risk arising from all of them. I realize that I will be running on a variety of surfaces, some of them far less than perfect, including but not limited to roads, unimproved trails, mud, swamps, cliffs, lumpy fields covered with waist high grass and river crossings. The roads are open to motor vehicle traffic that has the right of way. I know that broken bones, reactions to poison ivy and other plants, insect bites and bruising are common occurrences in this extreme event and that I will be far into the wilderness away from medical support. I realize that the danger of injury and even death exists as well and I hereby assume all the risks that may be present on the (DWD) course.
Oh. My. Word. This may have been a bad idea. But we paid money! We have to do it! So of course we wake up at 5:00 a.m. and head out to Devil's Lake (ironic?) for the race. We get our numbers and join the herd. The gun goes off at 7:00 and we are off. The first half mile wasn't bad. The next 1 1/2 miles were death. It was all strait uphill. Steep and rocky. We pretty much walked at least a mile of that stretch. I thought, "If the whole thing is like this, there is no way! I cannot do another 11 miles like this!" Fortunately, at mile three it got better. There was a lot of uphill battling, but there was plenty of downhill action as well where I could let momentum do half the work for me.
We wound up climbing all the way to the top of the bluffs, where we even passed by some rock climbers! The view over the top of the bluff down to the lake was breath-taking. I wished I was able to spend more time looking, but I had to watch where I was going because of the rocky trail. At times I felt like I was running through a tire obstacle course as I dodged the rocks and the tree roots. I was constantly tripping and stubbing my toes and, like I said, I really did manage to wipe out twice. We kept on going. With about three miles left my husband felt his hip starting to strain so we had to pull it back somewhat. He couldn't run uphill anymore because the shortened stride really caused a lot of pain. Fortunately, the race ended by going back down the hill that had been such hell in the beginning. It was a great way for me to finish out the race! (My husband maybe not so much)
Once we were down at the bottom of the horrible hill, we had to walk for a while as my poor hubby was in a lot of hurt. I could have run ahead for a better time, but since I talked him into this insanity, that would have been a pretty jerkish thing for me to do. When we could see the end, we jogged it in and we finished in 2 hours 58 minutes. That works out to an average of about 13.5 minutes per mile. Not a stellar time, but when you figure in the amount of walking we had to do for either safety, because it was simply impossible to run, or pain, it wasn't too bad. I am happy we finished in under three hours.
Today I am really feeling the pain, but I also feel accomplished. I can check that one off the bucket list. I think I may have run two half marathons yesterday...my first and my last!
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