Picking up and Brushing Off

It is history now.  My first half marathon didn't go anywhere near as planned.  Getting out there early in the cold wind and then standing for nearly an hour before the start... An hour that I could have been on the course and generating heat... It hurt me in ways that I couldn't, at the time, realize.  Almost 2 hours into the race and only 4 miles into the course, I fell victim to the cold and wind and my body succumbed to hypothermia for the second time in a month (the first time had been a mild case on a previous training run and I was able to manage the symptoms without medical intervention).  I was angry with myself and disappointed by my failure.  Sitting in the medical bus trying to regain my body heat, I watched others cross the finish line where I couldn't.  I wondered if I had bitten off too much... If maybe I was never meant to do even such moderate distances as the half.

Several hours after having started the course and only a little while after I had finally been released from medical, I sat on my bed at home drinking some hot cocoa, still trying to finish warming up and thinking that I should just stop trying to go for such distances.  3.1, I thought.  That is a good number.  It's more than most people my size ever do, anyway.  I don't have to prove anything to myself and I don't want to ever be cold like that again.  Why put myself through it.  These were the thoughts that danced in my head.  I posted my faliure on facebook and I talked it over with my friends and my pace leaders from Runner's World.  I was mad at myself, mad at the weather and mad at the race organizers and I said I'd never train for a half again.  I meant it.

But something my friends will say is that Robert may quit, but he can never stay quit for very long.  My anger started getting the better of me and I decided I still wasn't going to train for a half... but that I would use another half a step in a bigger training program.  The only kink I have in this is a little fear I've developed of the cold and hypothermia.  So, I have worked on that, getting new gear and doing things to help me get past that.  More on this in the next blog.