My Music City half marathon

I did it! I survived, crossed the finish line, and was not one of the hundreds of people passed out on the sidelines! YES!!!!! Nashville had record high heat on Saturday, so it was hot, but no hotter than it might have been here. So I didn't die. Pure success! What an amazing race!
This was so fun and I will never ever ever go back to a small-town race again.
Let me give you the highs and lows of my half marathon in Nashville!

HIGHS:
Hands-down, highest high was running this race with my brother Brian. It was such a cool experience to have with him and we had a blast! There are TONS of people there to cheer someone on and hold up signs for them. No matter whose name was on them or who they were shouting for, we decided early in the race it was for us. So we were very interactive with the crowd. Nearing the finish line, a guy held up a sign that said "I think you're HOT!" I thanked him as I rounded the corner in mile 12, but he told me it was for the guy behind me (my brother.) That was a high!

An amazing high was that I didn't feel my knees while I ran. They literally did not hurt and they'd been hurting like crazy for weeks. My run the week before had been so painful! Everything had been so painful, but they felt great! God was so good to me and I am so thankful! Why do I stress and become anxious about things? He always proves Himself faithful! I had spent the last week so anxious about this race because my knees were in such bad shape, but God even cares about the little things for us and He has made my knees better purely out of His kindness. He's such a good God!

The music was a high-with my favorite songs played being "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Livin' on a prayer". There was also a worship band out there and I loved that!

Another favorite moment would be when my brother grabbed what looked like a tongue depressor with a glob of something at the end of it at a water station where it was being handed out. He gave it to me and I asked him "what is this?" He said "It's the power goo" (if you don't know about the power goo, you will hear more about it in my lows. But you swallow this stuff and it gives you supernatural energy to keep on going!)
I said "Are you sure?" So when he went back to get himself one he asked the woman what it was. She said "Vaseline."
Can you imagine if we had tried to eat that stuff!!! That was a hilarious moment, only because we did NOT eat Vaseline! That would have ruined our race. (If you are wondering why they hand out Vaseline, it's because some people have chafing issues when they run long distances and runners use Vaseline to prevent that.)

It was just fun! It's an enormous race with lots of energy. When we started, there were runners in front of us as far as we could see, and runners behind us as far as we could see. That's pretty crazy! More than 30,000 racers participated.
It was a cool way to see the sights of Nashville. The course winds through downtown, and while it is somewhat hilly, it was a great course.

LOWS:
No one warned me. I've been asking experienced racers for tips for months now and not one person warned me about the port-o-potty situation.
Okay, no one likes port-o-potties. I'm no exception. I wasn't excited about it. But we left Brian's house at 5:30am and the race didn't start until 7am-and our corral, because it was a stagger start, didn't take off until 7:30, so OBVIOUSLY we're going to need to pee before we run 13.1 miles!
We waited in line at the first group of potties forever just to find that they were...well...defiled by nervous runner racer poo. Brian and I decided that we were the only two people out of 30,000 who didn't poop in the port-o-potties. And not ONE of them had toilet paper left. NOT ONE.
We abandoned those potties and went ahead and took our shuttle bus from the stadium parking to the starting line. We hoped for better potties there. From the stench, we knew we hoped in vain. We got in the more than 30 minute line to wait to pee (which wasn't optional for me! I had coffee on the drive in) and I was panicking on the inside. I could squat and touch nothing like any respectable woman knows how to do but NO TOILET PAPER. I couldn't do it.
And then I spotted a group of women a few lines over with their own handy dandy roll of toilet paper! They were passing it out among themselves! I immediately ran over to them and begged for some- and they so graciously gifted me with my own toilet paper! I so wanted to hug them! And then I wished I had gotten their addresses! I would have sent them a heartfelt thank you card...and maybe a gift card.
So I got to pee beforehand and told my body in my most firm voice that I would not be needing to use the bathroom again until we left the race and went to kinder bathroom facilities. That didn't end up being until 2 or 3 in the afternoon because Yeneneh, my nephew, had double header soccer games right after the race, but I made it.
Next year: BRINGING MY OWN TOILET PAPER. And probably building time into our morning schedule to stop somewhere decent just before we park at the stadium. I never want to potty where 30,000 nervous racers potty at once again.

Parking. Parking was a nightmare. Not only do you have that many racers, but you also have all the supportive friends and family members who come to cheer them on. Like my sister-in-law Amy and her six kids!!! They came at the end and poor Amy had to park her enormous van where everyone one, including us, had to park illegally so that we didn't miss the race. Somehow Amy did it and somehow she found us after the race which was purely miraculous! The crowds were unbelievable. The foot traffic after crossing the finish line took us about 35 minutes to get through before we could even find the parking lot. And there was Amy and six kiddos! With posters! She deserves the medal if you ask me. (But I didn't give her mine. It's mine!)

Power goo. I've heard about this stuff for a long time now and had never encountered it before. I've heard it's gross and I've heard it works. I had read on the website that it would be available at mile 10 so we had decided we would partake of the goo to keep us going. However, I almost threw it up. It was so nasty, it's like swallowing giant globs of snot. I started gagging and couldn't finish it. So I will not be partaking of the goo again. I will be finding it in another form and taking it with me next time. It must have worked though because endurance wise, I was great! I honestly wanted to keep going at the end! I was wishing there was a finish line somewhere between the half and the full. I would take on that race if I could next time!
I think that's in part due to the slower pace and running method we used. My brother uses a run walk combo, and I think it just preserved my energy in a way that made this race easier to finish. I think I'm a believer in this method now!

That's my summary. I honestly want to register to do the Music City race in San Antonio in November! I loved it and I think I might be hooked on races now. It's good to have a goal. It's good to work toward something huge and accomplish it. And it was super doing it with my brother!
So-November...who's with me?

Painful Training

24 Remember that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize. You also must run in such a way that you will win. 25 All athletes practice strict self-control. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. 26 So I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step. I am not like a boxer who misses his punches. 27 I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.1 Cor 9:24-27

I am training for a half marathon. If you read this blog last year when I was training I wrote a lot about it. I haven't written as much this year, but I continue to learn the same things from the Lord through this process.
Let me just tell you, today my knees hurt like they've never hurt before. I ran 11 miles yesterday! 11 miles! Yesterday, before I left, I was so nervous. I thought, 11 miles...that might as well be 30 miles, it sounds so daunting. Even though I did 10 last week. I had been nervous, but I did it! Still, I was terrified.
But God was so good, and taught me as I ran. It was somewhat windy. Thankfully, I had sweet Jeanna to do the last six miles with me. When I'm running uphill, against the wind, and it feels like I'm running in slow motion, I wonder how in the world I will finish. It's too hard. My knees might explode. At about mile 8 yesterday I had to admit to Jeanna, I'm struggling. She encouraged me.
Training is hard. You continually push yourself to do more than you think possible. I've been working out with a group of women at church, and it is so inspiring to watch women do more than they've ever done with their bodies.
And isn't that just like God? He's always doing more than we can imagine when we depend on Him.
We can step back and take a look at ourselves and think...it's too big. Too much needs to change. But He is more than able. And in the face of what seems like 30 miles, He does the work for us.
I love what training shows me. When I start out, I'm thinking, sometimes I struggle to get my three miles in a day. How in the world will I get to 13?
But He takes me one step at a time, and each time I run I have to celebrate the small victories. 4 miles...5 miles... 6...Wow! 8 miles...9...10!? Really God?...11! How did I get from there to here?
But He reminds me of Who He is! And I'm most reminded when I'm running uphill, against the wind, at mile 9.
There's purpose in every step. He's teaching me something with each mile. I don't want to miss it.
It's not easy. My knees want to give way today. The discipline of my body and mind is draining. But 11 miles are behind me. What else could God do through me if I just asked Him?
I'm thankful for training and watching God do BIG things! Why am I surprised when He comes through? Faithfulness is who He is! I obviously forget He's able, He's stinkin' BIG! He's God. When I rely on myself, I quickly remember I am not.

It's Gatorade Season Again!

I think I wrote last year when I did my half marathon that it might be like child birth. Intensely painful, and yet after a short while, amnesia sets in. You kind of forget. And then you're back, running until you knees want to explode, guzzling Gatorade, and planning those long runs on Mapquest.
Well here I am.
Cold weather runs. It just makes me want Gatorade.
But I never felt worthy of Gatorade until last year when I was training.
Gatorade was for athletes. Nike commercials. Not me.
So I abstain from my favorite Berry Gatorade. I think there's a five mile minimum before consuming it. If I've run more than five miles, then maybe...
Well I've decided to train again this year for a half marathon.
NOT the Armadillo Dash. First of all, Armadillo is in the name and on the t-shirt. Nobody likes roadkill. I'm sorry. It's disghusting.
It was quite an achievement in my life, but honestly, the route was boring, there are no cheerleaders on the road, parking issues so that my own cheerleaders couldn't make it, and my press conference at the end was non-existent.
If it's too much trouble to travel for a race, it works well, but not for me this year.
I'm trading up to the Music City Marathon in Nashville! YES! This is the perfect race for me! There are bands set up along the entire route. How cool is that? And I'm running it with my brother Brian, even cooler! (We'll have to see about the press conference.)
Plus, I'll have a lot more time to train. It's not until the end of April.
So if my knees explode and I have a near death, bright light experience, at least good music will be playing. That will be enjoyable.
So bring on the Berry Gatorade! I'm training again!
*If you want to run with me, I would love it! Running with friends makes it so much more fun, right Jen Crouse?

Vaseline what?

Post marathon pic. Can you believe I could hold this big baby? Mother's can find super strength at times, I tell you.

This is us in our awesome self-made marathon t-shirts. They had our names on the front, and mine said Mom 04, (like, 4 kids) and Rusty's said CALL 911. We thought we were cute.

The wonderful girls who made this all possible. Everyone who saw us at the race said "Where are your kids?" Like we just left them home alone? No, we had wonderful Amanda and my cousin Bailey who spent the night so they could go on duty with my kiddos at 6:45. How great are they? Love you girls!

So, I did it.
I ran 13.1 miles. Without dying.
I realized around mile 12 I had never gone that far before.
I was really nervous, pre-race, and though I slept pretty well, I had a lot of nervous peeing going on. I have bladder issues.
We got to the race. There were LOTS of people, and I wasn't sure what we were supposed to do...stand around and stretch, or what?
We got our cool numbers. I liked that. We got a tag to attach to our shoe which was supposed to calculate our race time.
We gathered in a huddle of people and we saw some people we knew...friends from church, patients of Rusty's, etc.
Jenn C. asked me if I had vaselined my hiney. What? She had heard you should vaseline your butt cheeks for friction. Someone else mentioned vaselining your toes. What?
No one, not ONE person mentioned to me vaselining (is that a verb) body parts prior to the moment we are standing at the starting line.
How could this be? I felt a moment of panic. What else did you veteran marathoners not tell me? Did I eat the right breakfast? What was carb-loading all about? I ate tacos the night before. I didn't have any of the energy goo people talked about.
But here I was, a virgin marathoner, and I was hopeful none of that mattered too much.
A local minister prayed before we took off, and I truly asked the Lord to somehow get glory from this. I have learned by now that He can get the most glory from the things we would least expect. This whole idea has been very spiritual to me. The Bible likens our faith to a race many times. God reveals himself to me when I'm pushing myself, against the wind, through pain, when I'm enduring, and really, when I'm doing something I never thought I would be capable of.
That's the biggest thing for me. God is accomplishing things that I can't even dream of.
Eph 3:20-21
20 Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. 21 May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages. Amen.
Amen.
My dreams are too small. Could I have even imagined Rusty? No way.
Not so many years ago, when I couldn't even run 1/8 of a mile, could I have dreamed that I would run a half marathon?
Emphatically no.
God has been growing me, changing me, molding me, changing the way I think, over time, and He has taught me a great deal about spiritual discipline.
I was once spiritually undisciplined.
As God grew me in this, I feel like that has spilled over into other areas of my life. I think the more spiritually disciplined I became, the more physically disciplined I became.
Is that true for everyone? No, not necessarily.
But that's what my journey has looked like, and running this race meant something to me.
So the horn blew.
Yes, a horn, not a gun. Very disappointing.
A mass of people starting running in place, trying to take off together.
This was very weird and awkward. I just kept saying "This is weird."
But the super fast people took off.
And the people who thought they were super but we passed later took off.
And we settled into a jogging pattern.
David Colvin, veteran marathoner and accountability partner to Rusty, decided THAT MORNING to run with us.
Did that compute?
He just ran the Houston marathon. He hasn't really run much since then because of a sore knee, but last minute, on a whim, did 13 miles with us.
This was really cool, and it livened up our conversation as we ran.
We kept a 10 minute mile most of the way.
Around mile 4 I put on Kirk Franklin and "put my hands up" and picked up my pace.
We trucked along, seeing David's family, whom we dearly love, along the way around mile 9. That was cool. (There weren't many cheer-ers in this race. Hardly any really. That stunk. Except for Manny Martinez, there to cheer a co-worker on, and he was our one-man cheering section. So cool.)
We saw our kids, Amanda, and Bailey around mile 10. I was so looking forward to that!
But about that time, what we could only describe as a "brutal wind" hit us.
Something to do with weather or something. Rusty could tell you.
So the last three miles, difficult anyway, were made REALLY difficult by this wind.
It felt like spinning your wheels against it.
This is where we walked for a few minutes.
But then we turned that corner, from the feeder of Hwy. 6 onto Harvey, basically our last mile. My ipod was playing "My Redeemer Lives" by Shane and Shane.
This wasn't the pick-me-up music I was listening to earlier in the race. It was my spiritual moment of the race.
I picked up the pace.
As I was running in, I heard "Run Baby Run" by Sheryl Crow.
We were fighting for the lead with a 70 year old man. That will motivate you.
As we crossed the finish line, people didn't cheer for us.
Why? There were a few half-hearted claps, but they didn't mean it.
Just as I suspected, there was no press conference.
I could deal with that.
But what I couldn't deal with was there was NO GATORADE.
They cut my tag off of my shoe.
Then some lady started asking me to vote for my favorite water stop or something.
I was disoriented.
I JUST WANTED SOME GATORADE. I started crying and pleading with people for Gatorade.
We found some calorie free flavored water.
Calorie free? Are you kidding?
All I wanted was my BERRY GATORADE.
And my kids weren't there.
We saw them driving away just before we reached the finish line.
By NO FAULT of Amanda and Bailey's, they couldn't reach us because there was no parking.
Heather tried to come cheer for me at the finish line too, like the sweet, sweet friend she is! But she couldn't get to me either.
No babies.
No Gatorade.
That made the finish line a little disappointing.
We met up with the kids along the road on Harvey, and headed home.
But we had done it!!!! We ran about a 10 1/2 min. mile we think.
2 hours and 15 minutes.
I feel proud of that.
I feel proud of doing it.
I felt lousy all day.
I was fine when we got home.
About an hour later, I felt like the flu hit me with a vengeance.
I wanted to seriously throw up.
Rusty, on the other hand, is SUPER HUMAN.
He felt fine.
He went to the hospital to admit a patient.
He then took the kids to the park.
Then...wait, you won't believe this...he played in a soccer game!!!!!
What is wrong with him?
Or maybe something is wrong with me, because I felt like death.
After my nap, I was better than before, went to church, sported a t-shirt that I will love DESPITE the armadillo on it, and came home for our Sunday night Wings n' more ritual.
I never enjoyed it more.
OH, and there was no need for vaseline for me. No friction issues, FYI.
That's all of it.
The good, bad, and the ugly.
I don't know if I'll do it again. I am betting it's like giving birth. After time passes, you forget how it really felt. You only remember the euphoric parts.
And I can tell that races are somewhat addictive.
So who knows? But it won't be anytime soon.
I am perfectly content with this achievement.
Yay!!! We did it!!!!

I'm Alive

Just wanted to say I survived today.
In fact, I feel like we did really well.
I will have a full update tomorrow morning, after I've had coffee, and don't feel so hungry and flu-like. Seriously.
My knees could explode tonight if I don't go get some frozen bags of peas to plant on them.
Tomorrow, I'll give you the full story.
Including, did you know you're supposed to vaseline parts of your bodies for these things?
More tomorrow!

Marathon Update

It's tomorrow.
I'm so nervous.
We are running the Armadillo Dash (I have so many issues with this name still) tomorrow morning.
I just woke up, Saturday morning, and had countless dreams about the race. I missed the start. Rusty had to go on without me. I was devastated! Amanda forgot to come watch my kids, so we had to push them in strollers, but I knew in the dream that was against the rules. That's far-fetched! Amanda would never forget to come watch my kids! In fact, she's spending the night here tonight, along with my cousin Bailey, so they're here early and they are going to bring the kids to the finish line. How sweet is that! Another one was that I had to go give blood for someone before the race, and then another one was that my Mom told me I couldn't go. I finally just got out of bed, because of this restless dream-filled sleep. What will it be like tonight, the night before the race???
In truth, Rusty and I are both nervous. But I think, if I live, this may be one of the biggest accomplishments of my life. That may sound silly. But this race represents to me that I can do something I never in a MILLION CAJILLION years would have though I could years ago.
That God has made me, in so many ways, into someone I could never have been.
He has faithfully grown me, disciplined me, changed me to look more like him over the last 10 years. I feel almost unrecognizable to myself sometimes from the girl I once was. That sounds so dramatic. I haven't been saved from a life of IV drug use or anything. And believe me!!!! I have so much more growing and changing to do!!!! I haven't arrived, and never will. But He is accomplishing in me things I couldn't have imagined, and running this race is a tangible representation of that.
Me. The girl who never played sports and athletic was the very LAST word you would have used to describe me. I'm running a half marathon. It's exciting.
Okay, so don't ask me about my time afterward. It's not going to be anything to brag about.
If you see me at church on Sunday night, I may be packing ice packs for my knees, because they've been unbelievably sore the days of my long runs, and I still have not run quite the 13.1 miles. I'm preparing myself for the pain.
And I will be drinking my new favorite thing ever...Berry-flavored Gatorade!
I was never before a legitimate Gatorade drinker! No, not this girl, who dreaded gym class, and was sure that I had a stomachache when we had to play volley ball in fear the ball would come my way.
Gatorade was for real athletes. I saw people drink it. They were in an entirely different class than me. I was in the musical class. I don't know what we drink. But it wasn't Gatorade.
So when we started training, I was legit. I needed some of that stuff. I didn't know if I was going to like it, but the Berry Flavored kind...I swear to you, when I'm running, it's the best thing I have EVER TASTED!!! I could be dragging, and then I get a Berry Gatorade break, and I'm picking up speed! It's magic! I love it! I think about it a lot while I'm running.
I am already thinking about having it at the finish line.
I also have been picturing a press conference at the finish line.
For me.
Like Rusty and I step up to the microphones, all sweaty and out of breath, and thank the people who made this possible.
I have to remind myself that probably isn't going to happen. But maybe I'll do it here on my blog instead.
Like last week, when Rusty and I finished our longest run ever in my parents' neighborhood, we were coming to our "finish line" and right there was a woman in her robe taking out her trash. I totally expected her to cheer for me, there in her robe at her trash can.
She did not.
I don't know why.
I had just run nearly 12 miles.
I'll get back to you after the race and let you know how it goes, that is, if it doesn't hurt to type.