Preppy Runner – Theodora Blanchfield

You guys.

Have you ever heard the phrase endorphin-drunk? Well, I am endorphin-WASTED right now.

I did the More/FItness Half this morning (thanks to Fitness for the free bib!) for the third time. (2011 More/Fitness Half Recap; 2012 More/Fitness Half recap.)

Insert standard OMG the corrals were so crowded photo. But really, they were really freaking crowded.

Gia and I were texting about the race, and she said that she and Meggie were going to run the race at an “easy pace.”

Y’all. Gia just BQ-ed, and Meggie regularly runs with her. Our easy paces are maybe just a little different. But still, I decided to start with them. If things got really tough, I told myself, I’d just hang back.

I haven’t been running much since the D.C. Half, so my plan going into this race was to “have fun and not kill myself.” We started off together and I went to hit start on my Garmin. Well, I hit start about 10 times and it never started. I decided I’d do this crazy “run without a watch” thing people talk about. I could have pulled out my phone and used an app to track myself, or I could have just gone with it, and I went with the latter. The ladies’ pace was definitely a little bit more difficult than I’d been planning on running today, but nothing I couldn’t keep up with. As we finished mile 3, Meggie said we’d done it around an 8:07.

“WHOA!” I said. Gia told me that it was probably better for me to not know my pace, and I decided to go with it. Again, I knew I could just hang back if the pace got to be too tough. As we took the hills on the west side of the park, things started getting a little tough. I did a little internal discussion: if I let the girls go, I could run at my own pace. If I let the girls go, I’d be running alone on tired legs. I knew that my mental resolve would be weaker if I did that, and the pace was still sustainable, so I kept it up.

Around W. 90th, Jess found us! Hello my lovely coach and buddy! Around mile 5, I started wanting a Gu. Since I’d not planned on racing, I only brought one, so I was a little nervous about Gu-ing so early and bonking later on, so I ended up consuming the Gu between miles 5 and 7. In this same time stretch, things started getting hard again, and I told myself I could ditch the girls after mile 7, when I’d have less than half of the race left.

I got to mile 7 and thought “uh, that’s still six miles.” A long time to go by myself on tired legs. I ended up waffling like this until around mile 9. Once I hit 9, I thought “just a four-miler from here!”

I ended up hanging on until mile 11, at which point I just couldn’t keep up with Jess and Gia any more and had lost the resolve to try–which was fine with me, since I hadn’t been planning on staying with them the entire time.

I shuffled through the last two miles and picked it up for the last .1 miles. I was exhausted but knew I had a little kick left. I knew I still would have a strong time but really had no idea what it would be. I saw the race clock near the finish, and it said 1:51 just before I hit the finish.

UM, WHAT?! I knew we were at least a minute or so behind the race clock when we started, so thought that maybe I could either PR (WHAT?!) or get really near my PR.

1:51:28. As in, just 68 seconds slower than my PR. When I hadn’t been training much, hadn’t planned on racing it, and when I PR-ed a month ago.

I am shocked and elated.

I love these ladies.

And running.

And life.

And sunshine.

(And puppies, obviously.)

Oh yeah, and I also did the Sports Bra Challenge after that.

Tell me about the last time you got completely endorphin drunk!