I’m one week away from running my first half-marathon. What seemed like a really good idea back in December is now looking pretty foolish. Why? Mostly because I haven’t been able to put in near enough training to finish at a pace even close to what I was hoping for. There are a lot of reasons for this, most of them can probably be chalked up to the timing of the race, some of them to my own lack of experience as a runner.

First off, my training has been interrupted numerous times by weather. It was probably an unwise decision to pick a big race like this that would require all my training to be done in the winter. But who knew that this winter would have the most snow accumulation in this area since they started keeping records? Sheesh. I did finally break down and get a membership to a no-frills gym so I could at least get on a treadmill. But treadmill running is different from street running. It just is. If this race had been in October instead of March, maybe the weather would have played nicer.

Secondly, I’ve been hampered by a nagging, recurring injury that I came to understand is Illiotibial Band Syndrome. It presents as a pain in the outside of one or both knees, usually showing up when you’re about 2 miles into a run. The only thing that will make it go away is to stop running. The pain also recurs when walking down steps. It is caused by a big cluster of fibers snapping across the outside of the knee. I learned some stretches that help to delay the onset, and some deep tissue massages that will help to limber up the area. But, once it strikes, it can take a couple of days before you can run again.  Like most runners I tried to “make up” missed training sessions by adding lost miles into future runs. Big mistake. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, doing so will increase IT band flare ups.

I was also out of commission for a couple of weeks because I had a wicked sinus infection. All the while the calendar steadily marches on toward the race. With each passing day comes more and more frustration and more and more questions. I ended up throwing out any time goals I had. “Just finish” became the new goal. For a while I thought that one was going to have to go as well. The race is almost here. It’s already paid for. I’m going to start it. How I finish will largely be a byproduct of the time and effort put in leading up to race day and my constitution on the day of the race.

What other races are we running? In a figurative sense, what are the things that we are aspiring to attain? Have we made wise choices in aspiring those things? If we have, are we making a good faith effort to attain them in such a way that will position us to be happy, healthy, and able to enjoy them? I think that I made some unwise choices in my race selection. I made some unwise choices in training. I could choose to ignore the choices I made, keep my original pace goals, and likely end up injuring myself in the race. Instead, I’ve decided to admit that maybe I didn’t make the best decisions. Sure, some stuff was out of my control, but the whole reason I started signing up for races was to have fun! If I can’t finish happily and healthily then, for me, it’s not worth doing.

So, when next Saturday rolls around, I’ll shuffle off with thousands of other people, maybe not as fast as I’d hoped, but hopefully at a pace that allows me to take in the sights and sounds of the race and sees me safely across the finish line where I can say, “I did it.”

Advertisement