Nashville . . .

I ran my second half marathon, the Nashville Country Music Half Marthon, this past weekend. And I'm pregnant. Running this race while pregnant is either cause for bragging or provides a good excuse for my time.

I went to Nashville for the race with a couple of good friends from work. It's always fun to get away from home for a few days and even more fun to do so with friends. The race itself was set up wonderfully and the atmosphere was fantastic. It is really something to be a part of 30,000 runners. I would go on that trip again in a heartbeat.

I'll be honest, however, the race itself was not fun. Running for me is predominately a mental activity. If my mind says I can run, I can run forever. If my mind isn't in it, I start hurting in the first mile. I signed up for this half marathon within a week of finishing the other one. While I knew it would be hard to train during the school year (as opposed to doing most of my training during the summer), my goal was to beat my previous time. Thanks to a couple of really great training partners, I was definitely on track to meet my goal. And then the mental hurtle of pregnancy entered the scene. I really struggled to figure out what being at the point in my pregnancy where I am exhausted ALL the time meant to my goal. Travis suggested just coming up with a new goal, a pregnant goal. Several friends told me to just forget about my time, have fun, and focus on finishing. Being a goal oriented individual, this was VERY hard for me!! I have a really hard time modifying my goals, adjusting expectations. (Yes, I recognize this as both the strength and weakness that it is.) So, outwardly I said I didn't care about my time for this race, but inwardly I really hoped that I'd wake up the morning of my race feeling great and able to just push through the exhaustion and morning sickness in order to still meet my original goal.

As it turned out, despite getting very little sleep the night before the race, I did in fact wake up feeling great, pumped up on adrenline, and ready to run hard. So I did. For the first three miles I ran fast. Really fast. Any distance runner will tell you this is a bad idea, pregnant or not. And it was a bad idea. Miles 3-13.1 were REALLY hard. If you don't pace yourself in the beginning of a long run, it is really hard to push through the end. The mental rigor of running a half marathon was compounded by the pregnancy thing in the back of my mind. I vascilated between thinking "I'm pregnant, I can't/shouldn't do this" to feeling empowered by all that my body is able to do at once. For the majority of the race I think I ran with blinders on. For being such a great race atmosphere, I was so exhausted and wrapped up in the mental aspect of the race that I was hardly able to focus on the wonderful things going on around me. I think that while I had trained well for the physical aspect of the race, I wasn't as prepared for the mental aspect. I wish I would have spent more time figuring out the whole goal adjustment thing.

In the end, my time was actually really good all things considered. I missed my previous time by 11 minutes. I can live with that. As challenging as that race was for me, the finish felt quite symbolic. I very much felt like I was stepping into a new chapter of life. With the half marathon done, my next "event" to train for is delivering a baby! Kind of crazy and hard to get my head around but exciting. I do plan on signing up for another half for next spring...always have to have something on the horizon!