The Sunday after we got back from Berlin, we had the Bonn Marathon.... To run or not to run, that was the question, but of I course I wasn't going to back out! (My heart said YES, but my knees said NO... and perhaps I should've listened to them!) Of course the morning of the race, I left the house without my number or chip, so I had to race back and grab them. The trams were also running really weird due to the marathon, so I ended up having to powerwalk over to the old AIB where the race started. (Guess that counts as a pre-workout?) I have never been so excited/nervous/dreadful in my life. Since there were literally thousands of people running they started us off in groups of a couple hundred. (We lucked out and ended up in the front of our starting group.) There's not much to say, other than my right knee tried popping out about mile 9, and some nice old man grabbed my arm to help support while I was jogging since I was apparently limping that bad. haha But I refused to walk, and eventually it kind of went back in. My foot was also on fire, and even though I had pre-wrapped and tapped it, I could feel the blister forming.
Normally when I think of three miles, I laugh because that's not very far at all. But let me just tell you, when you are in as much pain as I was in, and you realize you've only completed 10 miles and still have 3 more to go, that is the LONGEST 3 miles EVER. I was probably clocking a 15min mile at that point, but I did NOT walk. Sadly, I couldn't even force myself to pick up the pace when I saw I only had two miles left... But finally when I realized it was only a mile and half left, I convinced myself that if I could just go a little faster, then I would be done faster! (This resulted in a maybe 12-13min mile haha) And I must say that the end of the race was totally confusing. They had one sign saying 50m, so of course I took off sprinting to finish, only to realize that no, that sign meant TURN in 50m... and then they had balloon arches way before the finish, so you couldn't even tell where it actually ended. But somehow, somewhere, I got a final wind and managed to sprint across the finish line.
Say what you want, but I'm dang proud of my 13.1 miles in 2:28:15! I have honestly never been in so much pain in my life (it seriously might've topped my surgeries) so I'm not sure I will EVER run that far again. But it's pretty nice to know that if I had to, I could do it! (And how awesome is it that I can say I ran my first half marathon in Germany?!)
**Sorry for no pics! I'm having trouble getting them to show up in iPhoto, but I'll try to add some!
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