Tales of a Working Mother: Half Marathon...

Ten weeks in training... Juggling schedules with long runs... Ryan would run his long run first, then I'd run when he came back (almost every time I told him I was so jealous he was already done!!)... Learning how to eat enough calories, carbs and most importantly protein to account for the runs was a little hard for Ryan. Almost every day I'd say to him, "You didn't make up your calories yet"... He dropped about 25 pounds in the past year from running. This brought on many comments from family and friends. Some positive, most concerned, and some negative.
A lot of people don't understand what your body goes through when you take on training like this - they don't understand the mental battle that occurs either. Each run I go on, whether 3 miles or 12 is a huge mental undertaking.
I literally fight my body the entire time.
"You could walk you know.... This is tough.... You could just do 2 instead of 3 miles today.... This sucks, you feel like crap... You have your period, you could totally go back to bed..." The excuses and self destructive thoughts continue for most of the run....
Which is why I pray for the majority of my runs... it's a much more productive use of my time and it keeps me from fighting body/mind to keep going. Plus I feel connected to God and to the people I'm praying for and about when I use my runs this way.
I think a lot about the people and blessings in my life. I think and thank God for the ability to run and the fact that I am showing my girls that being healthy is a priority for their parents. We eat healthy for the most part too - sure we indulge every once in a while, but they see us having at least two servings of vegetables at lunch and dinner and limiting our sugar intake. If this is routine and normal for them, then when the decisions are theirs, I pray they make the right ones and it's not a struggle for them.

Back to the training. During two of the other half's I did, I used Gatorade's GU.

It's basically full of electrolytes and replenishes a lot of what your body loses during a long run. I don't know if it actually worked or if it was mental but I felt better about 15-20 minutes after I ate one... so I decided to use them during this training. I started on my 12 mile run. I think it helped, my energy was boosted at about 7 miles when I needed it most. This was the first time that my hips ever hurt like they did while training. I'm not sure if that was because it had only been a year or so ago that I birthed a baby, or just my aging body, or what... but it was something I had to deal with and suffer through.
Ryan didn't use any - he can't stand the taste and just wanted to run on his own energy. I did encourage him to have a protein shake after every run. I think that helped with his intake and balance his weight loss a little. I think it helped his muscles (at least that is the purpose). Taking a protein shake after a rough work out like that allows your muscles to repair themselves and actually build back up... because when you strain the muscles, if you don't allow them nutrients to help them repair, then you wont build up their tolerance, so to speak. I've tried a few different types of protein shakes and really like BSN Protein. I've tried the Chocolate Fudge and Chocolate Peanut Butter. Both are great!! The only thing that was tough was that when I was pregnant it said "not recommended if pregnant or nursing" so I went without protein for the whole time (I just stopped nursing at 15 months).

We run typically in the mornings - right after we get up. We eat breakfast when we come back - so we're used to eating on an empty stomach. However, knowing how long it would be before we could eat something after the half - I told Ryan to start thinking about eating something prior to one of his long runs.
He found that an english muffin with peanut butter was just enough to not upset his stomach and not leave him famished (well sort of) by the end.
I have a ritual of eating a banana and drinking a protein shake. Luckily, Isabella was done with nursing about three weeks prior to the race, so I was clear to do this.

The night before the race, we carbed up with Olive Garden! My wonderful mother-in-law stayed over to be with the girls in the morning. It would have been too much to try to bring the girls to watch us finish (Isabella is at that independent stage where she hates the stroller and wont stand too still for very long!) So she stayed home with them while we left and ran.

We got up at 5:30am and were out the door at 6am. My mom called at about 5:45am to wish us well. They were up because they were leaving for a cruise that morning (lucky!!)
The drive into Newport was a little rough. Nerves got the best of me and I had to go to the bathroom and was a little nauseous! It was more excitement I think than nerves, but all the same! I muscled down the protein and half of the banana. Ryan ate his breakfast and to avoid cramps I had him finish the banana. We got there in plenty of time - I ran to the porta-potty (yuck)! We met up with my friend from work who was running with us (we had paced a run earlier in the week and were excited to find we could run together - we had the same goal - to finish in under 2 hours!).
We headed to the start. The race started 20 minutes after it was supposed to so we were super amped to get going!!

There were about 4,000 people (which was incredible to see) running it. The first two or so miles were sooooo slow!! At one point I think we were running at an 11 minute/mile pace. It was frustrating because I knew that in order to complete this in under 2 hours we needed a pace that was less than 8:50/mile. By 5 miles or 6 miles we were getting close to our desired pace. We needed to run at less than 8:30 to make up for the first two miles and we were doing that!
It was so fun running with friends! People were holding signs for their loved ones, ringing cow bells and cheering friends on. Every time we ran by them Ryan and Ed would yell out "We need more cow bell!!" We were joking around, laughing and having fun and I felt great! Ed stops at every water station - Ryan and I carry a small bottle of water (me gatorade) so I didn't need to stop. Ed would stop and then catch up to us at each station. At mile 7 they had GU that they were handing out (i had stashed one in my pocket in case they didn't give them out)... So I grabbed one and told Ryan to grab one too. He tried, but the people handing them out didn't have the best hand eye coordination so he missed it! I handed him mine and grabbed my extra. I think he took about half of it but either way, I think it helped both of us. At that point, we were starting to really feel the run... Ed caught up and he was taking a salt packet (he had cramped in previous long runs and read that mixing a salt packet with water could help prevent cramps!) We were laughing at his reaction to how nasty it actually tasted!!
At this point we started smacking the mile markers - they were big A Frames and I have no idea why we did it but it was nice to just WHACK it as if to shout "YEAH, I KICKED MILE 8's ASS!"
I felt like at mile 8 I really hit my stride! I knew I was good to go for the next 5 miles. My knees and hips were sore again, but I pushed those thoughts away and tried to ignore the pain.

At mile 9 Ed stopped at the water station, but after about a half mile, he hadn't caught up... I looked back at Ryan (who had stopped too, so was a little behind me catching up) and said, "I don't see Ed, is he back there?" Ryan could usually look over other people and find him but he couldn't.
Prior to the race, we had decided that if one of us could go ahead, to just go and not wait on the others.
So, although I wanted to wait for him, I knew I should just keep going ahead.

At mile 10 I knew Ryan was tired. (afterwards he said he realized he's not really a distance runner by nature, because it's rough to keep going past about 8 or 9 miles). I think it was about mile 10 that I was realizing I AM a distance runner. I kept saying, "this isn't bad - just a typical 3 mile run left, we can do this"...
From mile 11-13, Ryan was a few people behind me and as I looked back at one point, he gave me the "go ahead" arm - but ummm, no, we finish these things together now... So I balanced my pace a bit more to allow him to catch up. When we hit the 12.5 mark, there were people stacked up along both sides of the course just screaming and cheering us on... cowbells galore!! I said, "Ryan, this is it, this is the home stretch, we're here, we did it!!!" And I could tell this was the boost he needed. "My hips are screaming" he said, but I told him to scream back, louder!!!
The course finishes right along the water with the beach on one side and the parking lot on the other.
There was a DJ and tons of music and cheers. We knew our bffs and my godparents would be at the finish so we were scanning the crowds for them. At the point when we could actually see the finish, Ryan grabbed my hand and we ran for about .3 miles holding hands. I saw our cheerleaders and yelled "There they are!!" The flow of emotion that hit when I saw them screaming for us and taking our picture was overwhelming. The tears started and I just kept screaming!!

I heard the DJ yell "Coming in, hand in hand, 3935 and 3934, look at that!!!" and the other DJ must have quickly looked up our numbers and yelled "Amanda and Ryan finishing now!" How awesome is that!!!
Even typing this, I'm crying!!

I can't tell you how proud of Ryan I was at that moment. He was so happy, and wore that medal with such pride!! You could just see how excited he was that he accomplished that!!

Oh, and I forgot to mention - we finished in 1:53:49 (it actually posted that I was in at 1:53:50 - but that's bs because we crossed that the exact same time!!) So we did it!! We finished in under 2 hours!! Our pace was 8:41.

We waited for Ed, and after the clock struck 2 hours, I just felt terrible knowing something had happened. In the past two halfs he ran, his legs cramped up at mile 11. Well, at 2:03, we saw him limping across the finish. The same thing happened at mile 11 this time. He was devastated, but he did PR so that was something to be thrilled about!!

After the race, they had free beer to finishers, so obviously we got our free beer!! We spent the afternoon with our cheerleaders pigging out!!