Last June, under a bit of peer pressure and during a momentary lapse in sanity, I signed up for my first half-marathon, the Sedona Half-Marathon. Sedona is stunning, but it’s also at 4,500 ft elevation and very hilly – not exactly a bright choice of location for my first try. Last weekend, nearly 8 months later, it’s finally over. I made it!
Why I signed up for a half-marathon
My friend Harriet, who lives in New York and runs 10ks and half-marathons fairly regularly, made an excellent suggestion when she visited Tucson last May. Since there is no direct flight from New York to Tucson, she proposed that on her next visit, she could fly directly into Phoenix, where I could meet her. From there, we could drive to Sedona or the Grand Canyon of Flagstaff, to see some of Arizona’s beautiful scenery.
At this point in the conversation, I made my fatal error: I mentioned that there is a half-marathon race in Sedona every February that she might enjoy doing. She was indeed interested, but somehow the idea morphed from her doing a half-marathon in Sedona to us doing a half-marathon in Sedona. Before I knew it, I had registered, paid the race fee, and booked our hotel. No going back now.
Training for my first half-marathon
Though I have an athletic history, the pool is quite different from land, so I had no base to build off for this run.
I had good intentions, but training turned out to be sporadic due to summer heat in Tucson, illness in November and January, finals for my courses in December, and travel in August, October, and December.
Here’s a summary of my total distance per month, from when I registered for the half-marathon:
June: 8 miles
July: 8 miles
August: 13 miles
September: 23 miles
October: 44 miles
November: 34 miles
December: 46 miles
January: 69 miles
February: race day was Feb. 2!
I had done a decent amount of mileage; the real issue was that the quality of a lot of that mileage was poor, and most of it was slow. Especially in the three weeks leading up to the half-marathon, during which I was sick.
The half-marathon
Lining up at the start line. It was nice that the run had relatively few participants (about 1200 people).
Worried about the distance after my illness, I took it really easy for the first 4 miles. Most people were passing me. Around mile 4, I felt pretty good, so I picked up the pace a bit, and was passing people until mile 9 or so. This was a bad decision, because when I hit the wall I hit it hard.
I started hurting somewhere between miles 9 and 10, but the pain was manageable. At least until the GIANT hill right after the mile 10 marker. Although I really wanted to run the whole way, that hill just wasn’t going to happen. So I walked for about a quarter of a mile, then ran/hobbled my way through the last few miles till I reached the finish line. My time: 2 hours, 12 minutes. I had no idea what to expect, but I’m pretty happy with that time. And surprisingly, my second half was only about 2 minutes slower than my first half, so I guess the pain wasn’t indicative of my actual pace the last few miles.
My finisher’s medal!
The aftermath
My body was pretty unhappy with me for about 30 hours after the race. The most immediate pain was from the giant blisters on the balls of my feet, which made it really difficult to walk.
Some of my blisters after the run.
Once I drained those and the pain in my feet started to subside, I began to feel the pain in my knees and hips. I think a lot of the knee pain was due the hills. I couldn’t bend my knees for a while. The hip pain was due to the changes in my stride after the blister started coming on around mile 4.
After the knee and hip pain started getting better, I finally felt all my muscles. This was the first “good pain” I had felt. The blister/knee/hip pain was all pretty worrisome, but I can handle general muscle soreness.
Courthouse butte in the rain. Since it was overcast and rainy, we didn’t do much sightseeing.
The best thing I can say is that at least I bounced back quickly! I’m glad I’m still relatively young, or that recovery would have taken a lot longer.
I’m proud of myself for doing the run in the end, but I really don’t think I need to do another one of those anytime soon! I’ll be back at my more leisurely pursuit, scuba diving, in March when I head to South Florida with my sis. My heart rate when I’m diving is about 100 bpm lower than when I’m running, so I think I’ll stick to diving for a while!
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