Holy crap.
I just PR’d my third half marathon by 8 minutes.
This after PR’ing my last half marathon by 10 minutes.
But this PR? It feels quite different.
Today, I worked for that PR.
…really worked for it.
Sure. I went into this race with the same goal I had for the last half marathon – to run happy, to run proud, to finish strong. No PR time lurking in the back of my mind.
…well, not *really* anyway.
I knew I wanted to run this half faster than the last, but I didn’t have a number in mind, I just wanted to run strong. I knew the weather conditions were going to cooperate and the course would be much flatter and less hellacious hill-wise. Which gave me a confidence boost – I could remove those two barriers from my mind and just run. Run strong, run hard, run proud.
I repeated those three things in my head throughout this race. Almost like a chant. Just to keep my mind from running wild on me – which it threatened to do quite a few times for the first half of the race. I told Scott I was struggling around mile 5 or 6 and he looked at his watch and told me, “no, you’re not – you’ve just run your best miles yet.”
And then it hit me: I wasn’t struggling, I was working for those miles.
It was in that moment that a switch flipped — as soon as I realized what was happening, that my body was working for those miles – and ultimately for that PR – that I started to trust it more. To let my body do what my mind kept trying to tell me wasn’t possible.
And what my body was trying to tell me was this:
That I could run faster. That I could run stronger. That I could run prouder.
…that I could run 13.1 miles in 2:05:32.
And for that? I am so proud.
…proud that I let my body do the work.
…proud that I learned to shutter those self-doubt thoughts lurking, those “struggle” thoughts.
…proud that I finished what I started.
And ran a race to be proud of.
The day that I worked for that PR. Today was that day.
13.1 all done.
*********
Editor’s note: pictures to come tomorrow thanks to my mom, official race day photographer. And special thanks to my sis and M for not just showing up to support us but to run a portion of the course “with” us (9.5 miles, they might as well have run the whole thing! Next time?…). ❤
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