#runnerblog

11/11/17: Anthem Richmond Marathon: America’s Friendliest Marathon

Location: Richmond, VA

Distance: Half Marathon

Temperature: 26°

Time: 2:17:15

On Veteran’s Day, I ran my very first half-marathon. I was never much of a runner, but I was an athlete. In 8th grade, I started playing volleyball. By my senior year of high school, I was the captain of my varsity team and the co-captain of my national travel club team. I knew I wouldn’t go on to play in college as I had accepted my offer to attend a division 1 sports school. As my club season was nearing a close, I knew I would need to find something else.

After all the graduation parties and summer BBQ’s came to a close, I started to feel the inevitable identity crisis that came with losing one’s sport. My old teammates were heading off to preseason and there I was still at home with nothing to train for. I felt like I lost a huge part of myself. I wondered, could I still be an athlete if I wasn’t playing volleyball anymore? If I wasn’t an athlete, who was I?

Just one year earlier, my mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She says she was lucky because with a few months of chemotherapy and radiation, she’d be just fine.

Easier said than done.

A few months before the diagnosis, she had signed up to run the Anthem Half-Marathon for the fall of 2014. She asked her doctor, “can I still run?”

‘If you can still run, you should.’

And she did.

She trained all summer using a modified version of Hal Hidgon’s Half-Marathon Training schedule. It was tough. There were tears, there were nauseous days, there were skipped days, there were days where her legs felt like lead. In the end, there was only one day that mattered: race day.

On November 8th, 2014 - bald as can be - my mother completed her first Half-Marathon. Three years later, I’m a junior in college, no longer fully crushed by the weight of my identity crisis. Having the accountability of a race deadline kept me training all summer and all semester-long. I was able to take control of my health and my happiness. As silly as it sounds, I felt validated again in owning and wearing athletic apparel.

Running this race gave me the tools I needed to reestablish my identity. The brisk cold and roller coaster-esque hills reminded me of what it was like to endure a challenge. Now I more deeply understand the value of pushing through discomfort and pain with a greater goal in mind.

My last article was about the fragile body of a runner – how we feel when we got stuck with the flu. First I thought that it’s a small could but I ended up having the flu – getting in a lack of training and nutrition just made me feel not really that full of energy you just wish to feel before a race.

But is it an option to not go and start a race? I guess it is, when you don’t feel strong enough and when there is a caught bothering you constantly as soon as you start moving. However – we did travel all the way to this wicked start line today. I decided to make the decision until 2 seconds before this gun goes off if I am starting or not.

The gun went off and I run there along the 10k course with the other athletes. 10k’s definitely don’t feel like a distance I love to run. It’s too short to find your runners high – it’s a distance you can’t run with a strategy it feels like and it’s a constant up and down with my thoughts and it’s a fight to find a mental balance. As soon as you feel a small flash of balance in you you see the “finish” Line – how great is that? Strange! I don’t know how this is with other runners but it is just not my fave distance to run but in order to get faster, build up on speed and experience it’s something I will get to face more often.

This flash of balance came – after 9k – yep! I knew exactly where the finish line is – and knew that I will cross this line not the same way I would cross it after two weeks of being full of energy – but I crossed it leaving two weeks of flu behind, a lack of energy and just not enough power to push trough that race the way a little pinkipower-runner would do so.

As a young, lively and highly motivated runner it took many many months, many conversations with experienced runners, doctors, physic therapists and my coach to finally accepting that long and slow runs NEED to be part of my training. To run slow on a low heart rate should make me faster - in the end.

I know it does not sound logical in the beginning and I didn’t believe this for months. I did ignore all the friends and runners, all the experts which told me to do so. But I knew something, that once you have your coach - a person which is putting lots of effort and work in your plans and helping you to improve your self and work on your personal best - you have to trust this person. And I sometimes wonder if all these great people know how grateful I am for what they do and for how much patient the just have with this bouncy crazy runner-girl and daydreamer.

So the slow runs are still part of my training-plan. But compared to a few weeks and months ago, I did start doing so. I started listening; I started fighting with my will to run faster and the ken to run slow. The pace on the watch did hurt in my eyes and I asked my self if my the belt which is measuring my heart rate is maybe broken. But it was not! ;)

So I run along - and I still do. Completing these trainings, the longer ones, the slow ones and I knew from the very beginning, that I will need to find a way, which aloes me to accept these runs, this rhythm. I needed to find a way to find joy in this style of running - because it’s part of the “PROCESS” - and hell, this process is a long one…;)

The art of running slow, was to find this joy, this spark in this style of running. And by today I think I got it but it took me weeks and many hours to find it.

To me this art of running slow is that I can focus more on other things such like how my posture is, how my arms are moving but I can also kind of drift away in my thought to a little “dreamland” and work on this picture in my head which is called “DREAM”. And all of that in a very relaxed mode. The legs are moving just like a little machine and the thoughts are wandering around in dreams and imagination.

And during the today’s slow run, I figured that I now did accept this kind of training in my schedule. It’s part of it like the intervals, like the faster-runs. This little thing, this fact did put a smile on my face and for a second I forgot that it was raining cat’s and dogs - I checked my heart rate and thought: YOU GOT IT! - The art of running slow!