Andrews Family

Some of you might consider me all the way crazy, but they only call it a half marathon because it’s only 13.1 miles. In case you hadn’t heard, this year I trained to run the 3M Half Marathon here in Austin. I started seriously training in October and  worked up to the mileage. I found a cool training program tool at online which I highly recommend. My main concern was my knees. I had been having some knee pain on my long runs but my training plan seemed to work pretty well giving me some recovery days. I also found that my knees didn’t hurt on my speed workout days which led me to a brilliant plan. Run fast. I figured the faster I run the less it will hurt. My slightly more detailed plan was to take it easy the first mile and just navigate the crowd; then settle into 8:30 minute miles for the first half; then see if I couldn’t crank it up the second half; then see if I couldn’t run fast enough to make myself puke in the last mile.

The race was Sunday morning on January 27 and I could barely sleep the night before because I was so excited. That morning was perfect weather. It was a little chilly so I wore a garbage bag as a disposable warmup. When the horn blew and the mob started shuffling towards the starting line I did have to wonder if I was really going to do it but at that point there was no turning back. Since this was my first half marathon, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but the crowd thinned out pretty quickly and I felt pretty good. They had markers every mile but with the help of my GPS running watch, which Jenny got me for Christmas, I could tell exactly how fast I was running and how far I had gone. I was running faster than I had planned but with all the adrenaline I figured I’d see how long it would last. I still had plenty of time to back off and recover if I needed. Along the course there were a few people I knew who cheered me on, but my big fan club was camped out at about mile 4. They have their race morning routine of Starbucks and donuts down now. Jenny even had the camcorder set up on the tripod. Livy cheered and waved as I run up waving (I’m sure that will look great on the video). After I ran on past, I could hear Livy crying for me. It was a priceless “Dad” moment I won’t forget.

The girls gave me a boost but that was only a 1/3 of the way. At about mile 6 I started to have a some knee pain. It lasted for about a mile until I decided that maybe I should suck it up and get back to the plan. I was half way so I cranked it up a bit. There was also a relay where a team of two people could each run half, so there were some fresh runners on the course which added some motivation to keep up with them. But I had a pretty good pace going so the main competition was against myself to keep it up. The knee pain went away and everything felt good. Every thing seemed like it was downhill; OK so maybe it was downhill. Maybe it was the energy gel packet I ate but the adrenaline hadn’t seemed to wear off. Before I knew it I was at that last mile. I decided to save my kick for the last half mile just in case so that I didn’t crash and burn. I ran through the finish line and there were my girls waiting to congratulate me. Livy seemed to like the medal I got. Yeah, everyone who finishes gets a medal, but I think finishing 13.1 miles at any time deserves a medal. So how did I do? The official result was 1:43:17. I ran the first half at 8:03 min/mile and sped up to 7:44 min/mile for an average of 7:53 min/mile. That was way faster than I had expected so I was pretty excited. I still felt like I had a few more miles in me but I wasn’t so sure about turning around and running all the way back to make it a full marathon. That is going to take some more training. It isn’t all about me though. The beneficiary of this years 3M Half Marathon was the very worth Any Baby Can.

So what about the aftermath you might be wondering. My legs weren’t even sore the next day. Unfortately I did do something to my achilles tendon and my heel was a little stiff. I thought it was just sore and tried to run through it. After a week I decided I better get it looked at and I went to a sports doctor. They confirmed that I had injured my achilles and I’ve been doing weekly physical therapy and exercises on my own in between. Rehab is coming along nicely, athough I still haven’t been cleared to start running yet. This has jeopardized the next phase of my plan. I said “halfway” in the title because I had hoped to do the Lincoln Marathon in May as one last crazy thing before I turn 30. The doctor says that is optimistic, but hasn’t ruled it out. So we’ll see - I may just do the half; two halves make a whole right? I had been saying that I wanted to do the full just to be able to say I had done one. That is still true, but everyone I know who has done one says that your body can’t maintain training for that distance. However, the half marathon is a really good distance so I think I’ll be doing a few more.