Longest Half Marathon Ever
My San Antonio Marathon experience can be summed up with the old adage, “Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.” The first thing that almost made me just call the whole thing off was my conveniently located hotel lost my reservation. This caused a lot of drama and anxiety as I tried to book something downtown but everything was booked. Magically a few days later a few rooms opened up but they were much more expensive and did not offer late checkout, which meant the only way I would be able to get back in time to shower was if I met my time goal and then ran to the hotel after running a marathon. Hubby thought I could do it so he didn’t checkout in the morning, so I had a lot of pressure to finish fast.
Second thing to go wrong was the weather. As the week went on it looked worse and on race morning the conditions were almost identical to 2009. Accuweather said 100% humidity and temps rapidly rising from 60 to 80 as the morning went on. This is the worse kind of weather for me. The humidity makes my heart rate sky rocket making race pace feel really hard.
Third and the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back that made me turn around at mile 13.1 was a nagging knee/hamstring injury that I have been running through and nursing for months that I thought would heal with the reduced mileage of the taper but didn’t and starting nagging at mile 5 and hurting at mile 6 and never ceased.
I never thought I would not finish the race I intended to run, but I had to be honest with myself and I knew I had already pushed the pace for a PR the first half of the race and if I didn’t stop I would do some serious damage to my knee and finish limping to the finish hours after my family had planned to meet me. So at mile 13.1 I turned around and walked/jogged back to mile 11 of the half marathon course and finished off the race with the half marathoners. I ran my longest (17.39 miles) and slowest (2 hours and 38 minutes) half marathon ever.
I cried and struggled with the decision in the days following the race but after hearing about the man who died at the finish line I came to peace with my decision. It was the best choice for me and my family. There are many marathons but I only have one body and I need to be responsible and take care of it so I can keep running for the rest of my life.
Filed under: Races
