Ran the Race!

After being warned by the doctor, my husband, and anyone else that wanted to share an opinion, I ran the Austin 1/2 marathon with Juli on Sunday. My foot had been feeling much better since Wed., and I was feeling no pain that morning and decided to give it a shot. At mile 1 we were blissful... talking about how much fun this was, and how easy it was, and how we were going to do these forever. By mile 5, Juli was still going strong, and I was in agony. I started running on my toes at this point because the back of my foot felt like the bone was crushing into the pavement. I wanted to stop, and I did walk for a minute. I just didn't even know how I would get back to the starting line, and it hurt just as bad to walk as to run. So I tried to keep up. By mile 9 I knew I could make it, and again, Juli was still doing great. But I did have to stop and stretch that leg and foot-- I think at this point my foot was going numb (how smart am I???!!!). By mile 11 my foot was definitely numb and I felt really good- better than I had felt the entire race. I hit my second wind by mile 12, and by mile 13 we were trucking to the finish line. We finished in about 2:34- a little less than a 12 minute mile pace (thought it was 2:25 but official results came this morning). Although every other muscle in our bodies were killing us, my foot felt fine- no pain at all. Until this morning! I woke up and knew immediately the boot would be going back on. I truly hope I didn't do any more damage to my foot, and I know this was not a smart thing to do. But for me, I feel like I have not followed through with so many things over the past few years, and it is important to me to show Channing that you can be a mom, but still set personal goals for yourself, and achieve them. We had worked so hard to get to this point. I will say that aside from the foot injury, this was easier than I expected (although I am MUCH more sore than I expected as well!) I have missed running, and it felt great to be out there with all those people (14,000 running)! Unfortunately, my sister-in-law was going to run with us, and when I told her I wasn't running, she didn't come. Since I decided last minute, she missed out on the race. She is much more experienced in these things than I am- she does Iron Mans- and I cannot imagine doing something that hard after doing this! Great Job Juli, who I barely knew when I asked her to do this crazy thing with me, and readily said yes. And for the past 2 weeks we thought she would be running alone, and she was a great sport about everything. This was a great experience, and I look forward to doing more (after I heal!)