The Everyday Adventure

It was probably around mid-January of 2011. I was at work and my friend and co-worker, Allyson, said to me, “I’m going to run a half marathon benefitting Crohn’s” in June.  Without skipping a beat, I replied with, “I’ll do it with you!”

The rest of that day I didn’t think too much about it, but she gave me the details.  It was part of a fundraising program with the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. And there would be an information meeting that coming Saturday. The next morning while I was brushing my teeth, I remember thinking 13.1 miles, that’s a long distance. I need to figure out what that really looks like.  At the time, I lived in Kannapolis and worked in Concord.  I had a decent drive to work so I decided to see how far that drive was.  Only 11 miles! I would have to run two more miles than my drive to work each day!  Oh crap, what was I thinking?

Let me tell you, I’ve never been a runner.  Each year during the President’s Physical Fitness test, I failed at the mile run.  Only two events I couldn’t successfully pass were the mile run and the pull ups.  Arm hang, I got. Pullups…not so much.  I would weeze my way through sports when we would run. I had known from a pretty young age; running wasn’t my thing. So, I’m not sure why all the sudden I thought I’d be a successful runner.  I guess maybe it was more like I wanted to be a supportive friend.

That Saturday, Allyson, our friend, Shannon, and I attended the information meeting.  They told us about how the program worked.  We would be assigned a “coach and mentor” that would help us along the process. We each would be required to raise $3000 to participate. And the race would be taking place in the wine country of Virginia just outside of Washington DC in early June.  I remember we finished listening and I was so not wanting to do this.  But I looked at my two friends and asked, “So do we still want to?” and both of them said, “yes.” Crap.

I didn’t want to go back on my word, so we got out our checkbooks and wrote our $100 checks to officially sign up. No backing out now.  We received a training schedule each month and every Saturday we’d meet at 8am and participate in the “group run” with the other people in the Charlotte area that were participating.  Since I was such a slow runner, this was my least favorite thing.  However, at the group run events, they would have special guests.  One week they would talk to us about nutrition, the next they fit us for proper running shoes, or they’d talk about breathing, all things I found very helpful.

We all worked hard at fundraising to get our $3000. We held bake sales at work, asked family and friends to donate, worked with the local minor-league hockey team to sell tickets that would kick money back to our cause, pretty much anything we could think of. It was a slow process but there were some very generous people that helped us along.

We stayed on the training schedule.  We would run after work as scheduled and it was going ok.  At the time, we worked at Charlotte Motor Speedway so we would go over to the dragway and run down and back and down and back until we hit our mile amount for the day.  I remember the day we hit 6 miles on our run.  It was the longest distance I’ve ever run in my life. Then around the first of May, Allyson got a new job.  It was a great opportunity for her, but the new job meant she was going to miss the run. Being so new, there was no way she could get out of it. That left Shannon and I with a big decision. Do we still do it? At this point, we had raised almost all our money.  We knew we couldn’t stop now since we asked so many of our friends and family to support the cause, so we decided to press on.

The two weeks before the half marathon was two of the busiest weeks at the speedway, All-Star week and Coca-Cola 600 week. During those two weeks, training stopped.  Long workdays didn’t allow any time for training. That worried me quite a bit because during those two weeks the scheduled training was ten mile runs and we were missing it. That meant going into this 13.1-mile race the longest I would have ran was seven miles.  Nothing good was going to come out of that.

The week of the event, dread set in.  I knew I hadn’t properly trained for the event, but I also knew I raised money and friends and family were expecting me to participate. I had in my head that worst-case I’d just walk what I couldn’t run. The day before Shannon and I drove up to the event.  We got registered and got our race bibs and transponders. There is a kickoff dinner that we attend and then we go to bed early.  We meet downstairs for breakfast early and get on the bus to take us to the race. 

It was a cool damp morning. When you line up to run, they group you based on the average pace you keep. That way us slow people don’t get in the way of the actual runners trying to get a good time. The race starts and I just try to keep a steady pace.  That’s what I did in training.  Focused on my pace and my breathing.  At about mile three, everything starts to go downhill not literally. Actually, just the opposite. There is a massive hill at mile three. I try and keep pushing but my poor training for distance was compounded with the fact that a lot of my training was done on relatively flat areas.  The dragway only has a sight incline as you head down the track.  Mistakes were made. I run a little. Then I walk a little. Then run some more.  I’m so incredibly slow and this course is so incredibly hilly. At about mile seven my right hip is really starting to hurt.  I get to mile 10 and I’m darn near at the back of the entire group and my hip is killing me.  I can barely walk let alone run. One of our coaches see me and asks if I want to stop because it’s obvious, I have an injury of some sort.  But I was at mile 10 and I wasn’t stopping.  I limp my way the final three miles to the end and came in nearly dead last, but I finished it.

I get to the end and there are people there that had been done for well over an hour. I was slightly embarrassed by how slow I was, but also feeling accomplished for not quitting considering how bad my hip hurt.  But really, I was in excruciating pain.  I sat down on the ground while they did the awards ceremony and thought maybe I could stretch my hip out and it would feel better. Nope. I struggled to get back up off the ground to head to the bus, but I manage. We go back to the hotel and shower and change.  Since we were so close to DC, Shannon and I decide to head over and check out the monuments.

As we attempted to walked around, I would have to stop about every 10-20 minutes and sit down to rest.  My hip was in such pain, I wasn’t sure what to do.  I tried to keep going but it wasn’t much fun for either of us since I couldn’t hardly get around. I limp around a little longer and then we head back to the hotel and stay the night. I had to pick my right leg up with my hands to get in the car the next day.  I was still in terrible pain. We made the seven-hour drive back and I rested up for the next several days.  Eventually my hip recovered.

Moral of the story, think before you speak. Ha! I can say I participated in a half marathon, but I will never say I RAN in a half marathon.  It was an experience I’ll always remember. We helped raise money for a good cause, but I thought I was going to need a hip replacement before it was all over. Every once in a while, I think about giving running another try and then I flash back to this day.

Running is still not my thing.