Tomorrow was the big day; the culmination of 3 months of training – my first half marathon. It is what has occupied so many of my thoughts, so much of my time and energy for 12 long weeks. I have put so much of my life on hold while I trained for this race. Let alone the time it has taken away from my hubby, and through it all he has been nothing but supportive. So many of my long runs took me away from home for half the day, only to come home tired, barely walking or able to do anything for the rest of the day…and there he was waiting for me with my couch woobie, ice, and dvr’d marathons of Fixer Upper and Alaska: The Last Frontier.
But apparently, this particular half was not meant to be. After all those hours, I am sad to say that I
am not going to be able to run tomorrow and I am devastated. After my last long run of 9 miles, I badly injured my knee so I have been resting it for my race. But this week, I decided to see how it was
doing and I started to jog even though it’s still been hurting me…I thought I gave it enough time; I thought I could run through it. The truth is that I couldn’t
even run a block without it blowing up like a balloon and I am back at square
one, barely able to walk…no race for me. I cannot describe
the disappointment I was feeling when I realized that there was just no way I
could physically run the race. I got
home and there was Jeff…waiting for me to see how I felt and I just looked at
him and cried…and cried…and cried.
I’ve had a few days to process these feelings and have heard
from my running and workout buddies to make me feel better. For some reason I just got it in my head that
this was my one and only shot at this…which is crazy. I don’t even know what I was thinking. So even though I am not able to run this
particular race, I’ve got my sights set on another one in the near future when this
body can physically handle it. It’s a
setback but it’s going to lead to my comeback…I just know it. In the meantime, I’m going to celebrate those
long hours of training I DID accomplish – I ran a LOT of miles! AND, I’m going to be at that finish line tomorrow,
waiting for my team to come across it and they’ll have the loudest cheerleader
waiting for them. I know that I will cry
some more…I’m a sucker for a runner coming across a finish line. I am so proud of all they have done to get
ready for this race – so many of them injured along the way, too. But we’re a tough group, so we’ll keep
going. We are runners…it is what we do.