2017 Rite Aid Cleveland HALF Marathon

It's here folks! My first half marathon race report on this blog! I started this blog on May 25, 2012 and did not write a "race report" for the half marathon that year. It wasn't a good race at all and I was focused on blogging about my full marathon training.

Yesterday was a very emotional day for me. I was actually starting to get really emotional leading up to Sunday. I started looking at the weather forecast as soon as I could. I was worried (of course) because they were calling for HOT and HUMID and potential thunderstorms. The race in 2012 was hot and humid to a degree that I heard rumors about them red-flagging the race by the time I was done (not sure if it was actually red-flagged or not).

I started to worry the most that they would actually have to end up canceling the event due to lightening. I know that the last thing race directors want to do is cancel a race; but I also know they want to keep us all safe.

Now to wait!

So Saturday I tried to go to bed early knowing I'd have to get up around 4 AM Sunday. I failed and ended up see the clock every hour until about 1 AM. Oddly enough, the next time I looked at the clock it was 4:04 AM and I decided to just get out of bed and not wait for my alarm to go off at 4:15. I looked at the weather one last time and watched the radar. It looked like the rain was going to hold off until about 9:30 and it looked to me like the lightening might hold off all together. This definitely put me more at ease.

I picked Leslie up and we were downtown and in a parking spot by about 5:50. We walked to the starting area and ended up hanging out inside the Q (Quicken Loans Arena) while we waited the hour+ for the start. My sister was running the 10k with her husband and amazingly they found us. Leslie and I were walking around in the Q and all of the sudden I heard my name. I turned and saw my brother in law.

We then all walked around the Q for a while until we decided to head out to the corrals. It was kind of crazy because we were heading towards our corral and the national anthem started. I have NEVER not been already in my starting corral when they play the national anthem! After the national anthem ended we made our way into our corral. We actually ended up being a little farther up than I had originally planned, but the crowd had started moving forward so we just jumped in.

Look at all the people!!! 

In 2011 I believe it took me about 10+ minutes to actually cross the start line from when they started the clock. In 2012 it took me more like 20 minutes. I was shocked this year that it was only about 7:08 when we were crossing that start line! And then we were off!

The start felt really good. I felt like I was moving at a pretty good pace and those first 2 minutes of running just flew by. It is ALWAYS  hard to stop to walk after only 2 minutes in a race, but I knew that if I just kept running I would struggle (even more) in the second half of the race. I am always careful to know my surroundings though and since the course is still pretty congested at this time I make sure I'm off to the side and no one is directly behind me before I walk. There were a couple times we had to run a few seconds extra to be sure we didn't trip anyone.

My watch beeped to let me know we hit mile 1 and I noticed

Starting line selfie! (complete with photo bomber)

that we hadn't actually crossed the 1 mile flag so I knew my Garmin was going to be off. By the end of the race my Garmin read 13.6 miles instead of 13.1. No biggie, but it just means that I like the pace my Garmin says I ran better than my official results! Miles 1-4 were AMAZING! Every time my watch beeped I would look at my wrist and would see we were not only maintaining an awesome pace, but we were pretty darn consistent. Mile 5 was slower because there was a pretty decent hill at some point between miles 4 and 5. We were able to speed back up a little after that hill, but our pace was definitely getting consistently SLOWER starting with mile 5. I believe that I finished 5 miles slightly faster than I did during the Towpath 5 miler in April.

The struggling really started between miles 8 and 9. I had to talk myself through the rest of the miles. Every time we hit a new mile marker I would tell myself I'm just looking for the next mile.

One of these days I'll negative split a race!

Prior to race day I was not feeling overly confident about my finishing time. I knew I could do it. Even when we had a horrible 14 mile run, we still covered the distance. I always want to at least beat my slowest half marathon time. Obviously getting a PR every time I race is amazing. That's what happened in 2011. I did the Cleveland Half in May and PR'd by 24 minutes (that's a LOT). I then did another half marathon in November and took off another 14 minutes. Not only was I PRing every time, but I was taking significant chunks of time off. Of course I know that even the best runners don't get better every single time they go out there. My half in 2012 was the 2nd worst time I've ever gotten and as much as that sucked I was just happy to finish. So, I wanted better than 3:20 and wasn't feeling confident about that. Of course I REALLY wanted less than 3 hours, but I thought there was NO WAY that was happening.

The good and bad of having my Garmin is that I knew how close I was to finishing in under 3 hours. I have no idea if I would have pushed myself more if I didn't know. I do know that I got to a certain point around mile 12 when I knew I wasn't going to break 3 hours, but I knew I was going to be way closer than I ever thought so it was OK to not push quite as hard. My official finishing time was 3:05.00.

There is that nasty part of myself that is upset that I was SO CLOSE to breaking 3 hours and I didn't push myself a little harder. But, I am quieting that mean person and listening to the more reasonable person who tells me that my time doesn't matter! This has been 5 YEARS in the making. Crohn's Disease tried to beat me. It worked really hard for 3 years fighting my efforts to quiet it. Crohn's may have slowed me down for a few years, but I never stopped fighting. I fought every step of the way even when I didn't feel like it. And now I'm back. Screw you, Crohn's. You WILL not beat me.

Sweaty, Salty, but still SMILING! 

I have told her many times, but I'm not sure that Leslie will ever realize the role she played in my comeback. I can guarantee you that without her I would not be writing this post. I am so thankful that our boys became friends and that we ended up connecting the way we do. Not only did she start running with me back in November 2016, but she stayed with me every step of the way yesterday. She was never more than a few steps in front of me and didn't even seem annoyed when I needed to take extra walk breaks. I have such a hard time believing that she doesn't care about going slow; but perhaps I'm starting to believe her.

And I think one of the coolest things was while watching Fox 8 News this morning I happened to look up from my computer when they mentioned the marathon. As I'm watching the clip I see ME about to cross the finish line! How cool is that!?!?!? And, it might be hard to tell in the pic, but I look SO HAPPY! I was. And I am.

Crash and Burn

And then get back up!

The spiral started on Friday and ended last night.

Let me first tell you that I AM FINE. It happened. I do NOT feel guilty about it and am not going to beat myself up about it. I am going to pick myself up, brush myself off, and keep moving forward.

On the schedule for Friday was our last long run before the half marathon on May 21st! (eeekkkk....I can't believe we're already at taper time). The plan called for 14 miles and I was actually looking forward to it. The weather was not our friend, but we decided to just deal with it and run in the rain.

The run started off a bit interesting. We got to the park and I asked Leslie if she had her keys. She said she put her key fob in her pocket and proceeded to lock and close her door. For whatever reason she went to double check her pocket as we were starting to walk on the path and discovered she did NOT have her key fob in her pocket. Yup. Keys were locked in the car. Sigh.

I suggested we just run and call my husband to bring her an extra key later. She didn't want to bother my husband with it. There was a park employee sitting in his truck so we decided to see if he had anything to help. He didn't. But, he had the number for the park ranger so Leslie called them. We then proceeded to start our run in the parking lot by running in circles.

The park ranger arrived about 15 minutes later and after a little while was able to get Leslie's door open. I then confiscated her key fob and put it in my hydration pack. About 40 minutes after starting our run we were now on our way to complete 14 miles. I was mad because my Garmin auto-saved the first mile since it was paused for too long. I know it doesn't matter, but you know how much I like my numbers!

Ranger Jeff - our hero!

So we set out to do 13 miles now since we knew we had completed at least 1 already. The first mile (running circles in the parking lot) actually felt pretty good. When we started down the trail though it felt tough from the get go. Perhaps that was because the first little bit is uphill. Perhaps because after warming up for 1 mile we then stood in the rain while the park ranger opened the door. Perhaps it was because it was wet and chilly. Whatever it was, I was struggling pretty early on.

We hadn't even gotten to our turn around point yet (6.5 miles) and I was needing to walk extra. My breathing was labored and I ended up getting upset with myself which  made me tearful and that never helps my breathing. I'm not even sure when it was, but I think somewhere around mile 7 we started walking. I was able to pick up my walking pace to much faster than what I walk at when I'm doing intervals. I decided I was probably moving as fast just walking as I was when I was struggling through the intervals.

Slower than my first half marathon - and not even as far :( 

Eventually I just wanted to be done so I started adding running intervals in when I felt I could. Man, it sucked. What sucked more than the run was how I felt about it. Leslie had never run more than 13.1 miles and I felt like I robbed her of a milestone. She still covered 14 miles, but it was not the way it was "supposed" to be. She's awesome and tries to assure me that it doesn't matter. That she's not mad and that if I weren't out there with her she wouldn't be out there at all. I can't get out of my head about this (perhaps a topic for another post).

Friday was then pretty much a food free for all and that was OK because I burned so many calories. I  have absolutely no problem taking my long run day and using that as a "free" day. If you're going to do that you mind as well do it on a day you burned a slew of calories. I also had wine for the first time in over a month. It was yummy, but I think it started the spiral. I ended up having wine every night this weekend. And where there is wine there is snacking.

Something else interesting that I noticed though; where there is wine there is less control in my eating the next day. I ended up NOT tracking my food Saturday or Sunday. I tracked some of my food Saturday, but stopped and then didn't track anything on Sunday. I was going to go back and track, but honestly I'm sure I would miss things and it doesn't really matter. It is what it is. It's done and I'm moving on.

I will say I am glad I am not weighing myself. It is still REALLY early in the month and I have plenty of time to get back on track and still have a good number come May 31st. If I were to have gotten on the scale this morning it could have done more damage. Believe it or not, I'm starting to feel a little freedom from the scale. Not freedom like, "I'm not weighing myself so I can eat whatever I want". But freedom like, "the scale doesn't matter. Do what you're supposed to do. Get back on track if you fall off and TRUST THE PROCESS".

Drum Roll Please

Well, it's May 1st and I finally got to get on the scale! But first, let's see how I did with my April goals.

April goal #1 - avoiding McDonald's. It has now been 3 full months since I've eaten McDonald's. I'm still waiting for it to get easy. It's easier; but the fact that McDonald's is so close to my house makes it stay harder than I would like.

April goal #2 - NO wine. CHECK! I did not have one drop of wine this entire month and it honestly wasn't that hard. I was in a MOOD this weekend and really wanted to just chill out with a glass bottle of wine, but I didn't.

April goal #3 - TRACK every day. Again, CHECK! I tracked my food every single day in April. There were certainly days that were more accurately tracked than others; but I tracked at least 90% of my food every day. I did not necessarily stay within my calorie goal, but that wasn't the goal.

April goal #4 - workout 6 days per week. I talked about this one already in one of my April blog posts.  I still worked out 22 out of 30 days in April so it's not like I got lazy or something!

April goal #5 - the scale. You already know from this post that I got to get a kind of sneak peek at my weight last week when I had my doctor's appointment. But, the goal was to stay off MY scale and THAT I did! :) And when I got on the scale this morning is was 6.2 pounds LESS than it was on April 1st. Now, to be fair, it was "only" 4.6 lbs less than it was on March 31st because I obviously binged that night so that scale was up April 1st. 4.6 or 6.2 I don't really care. Down is down and I am beyond happy about that. I averaged 2,130 calories/day during the month of April. BUT, I averaged 1,139 NET calories. I guess there is something to these net calories after all. My calorie goal on MyFitnessPal is at 1,310 NET calories per day. That goal is supposed to give me a 1.5lb per week loss (on average). Obviously net calories aren't an exact science. If I actually only ate 1200 calories per day for a month I should have lost probably more than 2lbs per week throughout the month. However, all these devices and tools are obviously not going to be 100% accurate. The fact that I ate well over 2000 calories per day and still lost around 5 lbs in a month tells me that the net calories do mean something. So when I see those calories go over 2000 calories on a day when my Garmin says I've burned a lot, I can maybe trust the process more and not stress about eating too much.

I have been really struggling with coming up with my goals for the month of May. Let's see what I came up with.

Goal #1: Sigh.......continue to stay away from McDonald's. As my weight continues to drop I will start to feel like I can keep it under control; but I know from my past that isn't true. My hope is that if I keep this a goal long enough I'll get to the point where it doesn't have to be a goal because I just don't WANT it.

Goal #2: TRUST THE PROCESS. A mental goal of sorts. Really work on taking the stress out of losing weight. Do what I am supposed to do and trust that it will work. Stress and weight loss do not mix. If I can do as much as possible to remove the stress of losing weight from my life I may even notice more of a drop in my weight.

Goal #3: Track. I don't want to have this goal this month. I want to have days where I don't track. BUT, I am a numbers freak (which we have learned through the years) and there is something I love about being able to look at what I did over the month to get the outcome that I got. So, the goal is to continue to track so that I can continue to be armed with knowledge.

Goal #4: Eat a little less. Last month the goal was just to track my food and not worry about if my calories were saying in my goal range. This month I'm going to kick it up one little notch. My goal is to keep MFP calories in the green (or at 0 to break even) 5 out of 7 days a week. I'm giving myself 2 days a week to be in the red because there are 2 days a week I have planned rest days. Eating 1,310 calories a day is hard for me so I want to give myself the (mental) freedom to not feel guilty those days I don't earn extra calories, but still eat 1600 or even 1800 calories. In April I had 13 days in the red. So, the goal for May is to have no more than 8 days in the red.

Goal #5: The scale.....hmmmmm....I am so torn on this one. I was thinking that when I stayed off the scale in Feb and April I lost more weight than between March and April; but that's actually not true. However, looking at my weight in March when I was weighing myself sporadically, I see that it was down and then up and down a little but not to the lowest it had it, then up again. Ugh. I made the decision to get off the scale in April because I was feeling like I wasn't losing weight while I was weighing myself. For May I was thinking either STAY OFF THE SCALE again or, weigh myself ONCE A WEEK on MONDAY mornings only and deal with whatever the number is. I think I know what you all would say if I asked your opinion. June 1st won't work as my next weigh in though because I won't be home so no access to my scale. So, I will stay off the scale until May 31st. There. I said it. Ugh....now to torture myself again for another 30 days!

You'll notice that I didn't put anything about wine for the month of May. More importantly though I want to focus on keeping my calories more in check. I can't do that if I'm drinking wine to excess every single weekend. But, it will give me the freedom to enjoy my wine on evenings when I've had a long run. Or, to celebrate finishing my first half marathon after a 5 year hiatus!

Can you even believe we're in half marathon month?!?!? But that's a whole different subject!