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STORY TIME BECAUSE I'M SO OVER THE MOON HAPPY ABOUT THIS LIFE ACCOMPLISHMENT!!!!!!!!!! So back in March, I was drinking with some friends (the same friends who convinced me to sign up for a 10K while drunk) and next thing I knew, I was signed up to run a half marathon at the end of May. I do 5Ks and lift weights and do CrossFit-esque things. I was NOT a runner. I'm 5'8 and weigh over 200lbs. I'm strong, but I'm not fast, and I've never enjoyed running because it just makes me feel inadequate and weak and too large for the space I occupy. It's very much a mental thing for me. Yet there I was, with this seemingly-insurmountable task ahead of me, all focused around running. I set my training plan, kinda stuck with it up to mile 5, then a back injury followed by shin splints sent me spiraling off the wagon. I continued with my lifting/CrossFit/functional fitness workouts 4-5x/week because those made me happy, but I did no running because running made me miserable. And yet the half marathon continued to loom!!! Fast forward to one month before the race and I FREAKED. THE EFF. OUT. How was I going to run 13.1 miles in a month when I hadn't run more than three in the past two months??? So that Sunday, I laced up my running shoes and did an 8-mile training run. Did I run every step? Of course not. But I did it and I was committed to at least doing my long runs leading up to the race. Next week, I did 9 miles. Then 11 miles. Then it was the weekend before the race and I ran a casual 3 miles and it was HARD. I went to my gym on the Tuesday and Wednesday leading up to the race to keep momentum and because it puts me in such a good mood. I have some of the best coaches and best gym buddies there that make for a fantastic support system. I was in the middle of moving apartments and was wicked stressed, so it was just plain GOOD to be there. Got a lot of pep talk from my two coaches and plenty of words of support and advice from my gym buddies. Packed my bag Friday morning, went to work, then off I went with three friends to Virginia for the half marathon! I slept MAYBE 2 hours the night before the half. There were four of us squished into a hotel room and I'm a really light sleeper. And I was nervous as hell. 4:45 a.m. came WAY too early, but up we were and by the time the 7 a.m. start time rolled around, I was ready to just get the damn thing over with. Humidity was at 90%, but at least it was overcast. The course advertised as "flat," but it was clearly all hills! Despite all that, all my mental freaking out and failed training plan, I absolutely FLEW through those first five miles. My average mile time for all my training runs had been between 11:41 and 12:30. My usual 5K time is around 35 minutes. But those first five miles? I was doing 10:00 miles. Holy moly was I flying!!! I knew I had to slow down, so I did, and settled into a nice pace with some walking interspersed to give myself some recovery time so I could keep trucking. I really don't like plodding along, so during all my training runs, I did this nice run-one-song-walk-one-song routine so I could run at a decent pace for half of the time instead of plod at a miserable pace for the full time. A lot of the course was not only hills, but also a weird dirt road! Nobody in my group was prepared for that. One of my friends has run a full marathon before and another has run 6 half marathons, and even they didn't run every step. That made me feel SO good about how I was doing. I felt great until mile 10 when pain started to settle in, but by then I was so close to done that it didn't matter. I also saved a baby turtle at mile 10, so that was a mood booster! This lil guy tinier than my palm was trying to scuttle across the road, so I stopped to move him to the other side so he wouldn't get stepped on. So cute! Also saw some bunnies and at one point I was running by a pasture and a horse and two ponies came out to run alongside the course. I crossed the finish line with an official time of 2:32:00. I think that comes out to an 11:36 mile? BUT BUT BUT according to my GPS I wore, I actually ran 14 miles (I weave around a lot), which actually set me at a sub-11:00 mile average. Which is a whole 1:30 faster than most of my training runs! I WAS SO PUMPED!!!! Three real training runs during the course of the whole prep period, and I logged a 2:32:00 and a faster mile average than ever. Crushed my 5K record. Crushed my 10K record. I felt like I was on top of the freakin' world. TL;DR I failed at training for running and only did lifting/CrossFit leading up to a half marathon then I went out and crushed it and had a 24-hour endorphin rush that I may or may not still be high on and I've never felt this good about my life or this happy in a long time and everything is awesome.