Thursday, March 26, 2015

20….20….and Well Almost 20 – Kristina



Four weeks to go! Yikes! I still can’t believe I am doing this! Really me, I am running the Boston Marathon! This week may go down in the books as not the best week yet. Throughout the beginning of the week I was battling a stomach bug but still managed to get a few good workouts in, but then Thursday hit and so did the cough, cold, chills and bed. Due to not feeling well I ended up taking off three days from working out, something practically unheard of for me, but I could barely breath just sitting, never mind running. Then Sunday rolled around and so did our long run. I met the other two amigos at NWH for our normal weekend long run, and a long one it was. Sunday it was 20 degrees, with 20 mile per hour winds and our goal was 20 miles. The run started out pretty good, I was struggling a little on the hills but doing fairly well for feeling like I only had half a lung. I ran past the Citgo sign and saw the actual Boston Marathon finish line for the first time in my life! These were definitely the highlights of the day, but the rest I am pretty sure I would like to forget. After about 12/14 miles my body started shutting down. The last six miles back to the car was an extreme struggle, consisting of some jogging and mostly walking. I just could not get my legs to run even if I tried. I tried running from street sign to street sign, then I went to running on the down hills and walking up hills, to eventually just running when I can and walking the rest. Although it was probably one of the worst workouts of my life, now looking back I can’t believe I did it! It may not have been pretty, but this is the most distance in anything I have ever done before in my life. I ended up completing 19.30 miles, which is about 5/6 more miles than I have ever done before. As much as I am not looking forward to doing another 20 miles this upcoming weekend, I am looking forward to attempting another 20 miles! I know I know, that must not make any sense, but I am looking forward to bettering myself and improving on my experience from Sunday! This upcoming Sunday I am competing in the Eastern States 20 miler and I am looking forward to seeing how it goes! My goal is to focus on spreading out hydration, adding in more nutrition and keeping my head held high!

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