Amy Lu's View

First things first: I totally kicked ass in the Rochester Med City half marathon I ran yesterday. Not only did I get a PR (Personal Record), but I REALLY earned a PR. I finished the half marathon (13.1 miles) in 1 hour, 51 minutes and 14 seconds. (1:51:14). Prior to that, my fastest time completing a half marathon was 1:56:07. My average pace during the Med City was 8:30 minutes per mile. I NEVER thought I could run a half marathon at that pace (I’m usually around 9:00 minutes per mile). I also ran my fastest mile EVER (7:40) and it was stupid hot and humid.

I didn’t intend on starting this post with that but then I realized I was burying the lead.

I also didn’t plan on running a half marathon yesterday. I planned on running a full marathon (26.2. miles). But in running, as in the rest of life, things don’t always go as we plan.

I’ve only run one marathon in my life, so I’m hardly a seasoned veteran. But I know that no matter how diligently you train, things can wrong with your marathon. Your performance and experience are affected by factors both in and outside of your control, like how much sleep you’ve gotten, what you’ve eaten, your overal health and injuries (including an injury that may have been caused by stretching your leg up too far to take a pre-race selfie that showed off your new shoes), gear/clothing mishaps, and…the weather.

Obviously, the weather plays a big role in a marathon. I expected this. But I did not expect that it would be so hot and humid in MINNESOTA IN MAY that the marathon we were signed up to run would be cancelled. Especially when at least half of our training time was spent dealing with unseasonably cold and icy weather.

And yes, I know that life is not fair, and even on the scale of marathon mishaps, we could have had it much worse. We could have been trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon or have been planning on traveling much further than the 90 minutes to Rochester.

But still, we trained for this marathon for 16 weeks with over 91 hours of running. In those 91 hours I ran approximately 611 miles. And my training had went (mostly) well (except for some already-blogged about mishaps). I was pretty psyched that I could do noticeably better during marathon #2, and my first marathon went pretty darn well.

AND it was our 23rd wedding anniversary, so running this marathon was romantic and all that.

So yeah, I was a titch disappointed. Surpringsly, there weren’t any tears. And while I tried to feel accomplished at the effort and success of my training for it’s own sake and bask in all I achieved and learned, I wanted to see what I could do. I wanted to earn that medal and the unflattering t-shirt I would never wear, not to mention all the unflattering selfies of me all sweaty and bloated that I would post on Facebook.

What do you do when you’re all trained up for a marathon with no one to run? You sign up for another one! Luckily, the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth was still open so we registered for that as soon as we got official word that the Med City Marathon was cancelled. And we even found lodging (more or less) at the Black Bear Casino, not too far away from the start line.

So we had an awesome half marathon yesterday on our anniversary (not only did we both kick ass, but there was a great assortment of chips after the race AND an awesome 80’s/90’s hard rock cover band at the post-race party and I got in some excellent retail therapy at the race expo) and we still have a marathon to look forward to/obsess about. AND the finisher’s shirt isn’t too unflattering (v-necks are somewhat sexy, right?) and maybe I can write in “half” with a sharpie on it. At least I could edit my shirt (and medal) for the photo on Facebook.