My Half-Marathon training stopped completely this month during my running hiatus.  My husband and I have separated, I’ve lost 5% of my body weight in four weeks, sleep has become a precious commodity, and there has been little energy left for running.

Originally I wanted to do a ton of speed work to really be able to kick this Half Marathon from one end to the other.  The speed work was put on pause due to my hyper-extended hamstring and plantar fasciitis injuries back in January and early February.  Once I was recovered from the physical injuries, emotional stress took over and colored my life in hues I never imagined possible.

And yet, I never thought about not running the race.  As life unfolded around me, I simply changed my expectations.  Where once I hoped to pull out a huge PR time of 1:35, now I just wanted to run.  I knew this race would be the slowest one yet, but it didn’t matter.  Just showing up would be enough.

Yesterday, I dedicated the day to eating.  I ate every 4 hours with the singular goal of ingesting enough calories so that I could burn 1300 calories on the racecourse without going into deficit the next day.

I got up early this morning, building in enough time to make a big breakfast and drink several glasses of water.  I drove to the Boulder Reservoir and pulled into a parking space 45 minutes before gun time, and sat in my warm car sorting out my gear.  The car thermometer read 31 degrees; I waffled about whether or not to wear the jacket over the long sleeve wicking shirt.  People were walking by on their way to the porta-potties in various stages of dress; long pants and shirts, jackets, women in Capri tights, and a few brave souls in shorts and singlet’s.  I shivered just looking at them and kept the jacket on.

The race started at 8:10am, ten minutes later than the prompt starting time the race directors had promised due to cars still coming into the parking lot.  By the time the starting gun went off I was literally bouncing with excitement; my feet would not stay planted on the earth.  It was time to run.

Eventually.  For now, we walked or bounced slowly, ever so slowly, across the starting mat.  The crush of people didn’t thin out for over a mile.  There was no way to get out of the crowd; I had started too far back.  I had thought to use the first two miles as warm-up, and this is exactly what ended up happening, albeit more slowly than I originally hoped.

After a mile I threw the jacket into the ditch on the right; I would retrieve it on the return trip.  The sun was out and things were warming up.  I dodged around people, trying to get out of the 10-minute mile group and into something in the 8’s.  This was ridiculous.

The course is a literal out-and-back on the Boulder Backroads.  I’ve run these roads so many times in the past year that I know every nuance of the rise and fall of the earth.  Time moves differently when throngs on people surround you on an early spring day than it does when you’re on a solitary training run in the dead of winter.  After the initial paces were sorted out, I enjoyed the gentle ascent of the road as I comfortably chatted with various people around me.

After four miles of easy-peasy running the leader of the return pack made his appearance.  He had already looped at 6.5 miles and was headed back to the finish line.  I called out a cheer, and then kept my eye on the return lane for the chase pack.  How close would they be?

I turned my music on low and let the gentle rhythms carry my feet along.  Tab Benoit, the Indigo Girls, Michael Franti, One EskimO, Adele, Uncle Kracker and Michael Jackson kept me company though the water stations and over large chunks of gravel that sometimes pushed a little too hard into the thin soles of my minimalist Scott shoes.

And then I was at the turn-around point.  I stopped for a super-fast pit stop, then crossed the mat and started my return journey on the backside of the Half.  The Garmin said I was right around 59 minutes for the first half of the 13.1 miles; I wondered if I could negative split this one?  Did I have the energy to pull out some faster miles?  Given the fact that the hill work was all but over, I decided to become a slave to gravity and let it pull me easily back to the finish line.

Splits for the first half:  9:49, 8:41, 8:58, 8:43, 8:57, 8:39, 8:37.

I wore my Nathan hydration vest, the same water system that got me through the California International Marathon in December, and was pleased to find a forgotten, half-eaten package of Clif Gels in one of the front pockets.  I popped a gel in my mouth, only to immediately take it out and try to bite the stale cube in half.  It was hard and stuck in my teeth.  I settled into my pace and worked my jaws, completely entertained by the effort of eating calories that would give me a little boost through the next hour of running.

I was consistently passing people now, and concentrated on finding a hole or scooting around people so that I didn’t tangent too much on the course.  I wasn’t interested in adding on too much distance, something I learned the hard way on the Marathon in Sacramento last year when I blew every tangent and added a good quarter-mile to my total distance.

I glanced at the Garmin from time to time and was happy to see that I was in the low 7-minute range now.  I had dropped a minute from my pace/mile and was well on my way to pulling in a solid negative split.  The legs still felt good, the lungs were in good shape, and I was moving easily.  This was fun.  This was easy.  This was what I was meant to do.

The road was dry and there were sections that had large, loose gravel that jutted sharply upward.  Cows stood on the side and paused in their delicate business of chewing as they quietly watched us run far and fast for no apparent reason.

The miles flew by.  I passed more and more people.  Some were just a hair slower and I had to pick them off.  Some were going at half my pace, and I wondered how in the world they had gotten so far ahead of me before I finally remembered that there were three distance and turn-around options: 10k, 10 mile, and Half-Marathon.  Right… so, many of these fine folks hadn’t gone to the same mat as me.  Okay.

I started looking for someone that was going my same pace, someone that I could anchor to.  There was no one, until finally at mile 10, a big guy in black pants was just ahead of me.  Maybe he saw me coming and didn’t want to get “chicked”, but he picked up his pace and stayed just ahead of me for the next few miles.  I saw him look over his shoulder a time or two, as though gauging how fast I was going and what pace he needed to hit to stay ahead.  I didn’t try to stick to him, but every time I looked up he was still there, pulling me in to the finish line.

I would have followed him into the race shoot but I was distracted with finding my jacket in the ditch.  When I looked at the road again, he was gone and I was turning off into the dead grass and parched earth, pounding down the final stretch to the finish line.  I was starting to feel anaerobic, and knew I had pushed myself to the limits.  It was time to stop running.  Thankfully, I had arrived.

I crossed the finish line and slowed to a walk, taking deep breaths and letting oxygen replenish my system.  A volunteer took the timing chip from my wrist and another woman placed a finisher medal around my neck.  It was over.  I had pulled out a negative split, but wouldn’t know the reality of the numbers until I was standing in the food line, playing with the settings on the Garmin:

8:04, 7:32, 7:19, 7:24, 7:34, 7:23, and a final .1 mile that I didn’t catch because I forgot to stop the Garmin when I went over the finish mat.

The official results say that I ran 13.1 miles in 1:49:59.

Time for the first half:  59:48

Time for the second half:  50:11

This was no PR for me, but I’m thrilled with the race just the same.  It will hold a lot of significance for me when I look back at what I accomplished during a very stressful time in my life, when I wasn’t in shape or ready for a serious race.  I enjoyed myself completely today, and sometimes, that’s the best reason to run.