Dreaded Fargo HM race report.

So-because I want to look back at this and remember that I never want to have a race like this again I am going to document it from beginning to end....Yeah-I'm going to pour myself a drink first!

Official Results
Time: 1:40:54
Overall: 333 of 5367
Gender: 70 of 3243
Division: 10 of 590


Me and my little Reesie before the race

OK- first of all by no means do I mean to insinuate that a 1:40 is not a decent half marathon time. It IS, but not so much if you just completed a FULL marathon with an average pace faster on a much more difficult course, or the fact that my PR is almost 4 minutes faster than this even prior to the 7 months of pretty decent training I just completed. I'm not comparing myself to others only to myself. I am somewhat new to the running world and since I've been running races with a time goal in mind I've never ran a "bad" race.

So-here goes.

Got to Fargo on Friday and had been bouncing around all week weather or not I was going to run this as a race or run it with my dad and my sister. My sister was pacing my dad to hopefully break 2 hours and I've always wanted to run a race with my dad! Got to the expo and pretty much decided I was going to "race" this myself and started prepping myself since I had a goal in mind that would be borderline unreachable for me.

Anyways, Friday night after the 5K race, I started to feel the extreme abdominal pressure related to the unfortunate female curse and really started to feel like crappola!! For some reason this beats me up like you wouldn't believe ever since the birth of my 3rd child. No idea why...After 4 ibuprofen and about an hour curled up on the bed I decided I would run the race with my dad and my sister and called my dad to set up a plan to meet before the race.

Got up early on Saturday morning and didn't feel altogether better than the night before. Snakebite city right around the middle...I knew I'd be fine running a 2 hr. half and got ready with my hubby to head to the Fargodome. I was bringing my kids and they were going to set up in the bleachers and then meet up with my mom and my other sisters! We got majorly hung up in traffic. Race started at 7:30 am and at 7:12 we were still sitting in traffic and I still had to get my kids set up, go to the bathroom, and make it to the starting line. Super mad rush!! Joe and I actually ran to the starting corral through POURING rain and had no time to consider a bathroom stop which I already needed and the race hadn't begun yet. I missed my meet time with my dad and my sister and I ended up standing next to my husband with the national anthem half over and absolutely no game plan! Now, I am a highly stressed person and I totally need to obsess about what I'm going to do prior to doing it and 30 seconds is not quite enough time for me to make a decision. Joe quickly piped up that he would pace me to my potentially unreachable goal and to just stick with him. I agreed and the gun went off.

Mile 1-7:18 -pretty much on pace for where I'd want mile one to be and actually feeling remarkably good

Mile 2-7:12-still feeling good and wondering if maybe this was going to work out pretty well. The rain had slowed and although the wind gusts were less than ideal it was pretty decent running weather and I knew I would have a tailwind in the back half

Mile 3-7:10-Hey, this is OK but I really wish I would have had time to stop at the bathroom.

Mile 4-7:14 but just before the mile 4 marker-bathroom urgency!! By this I mean complete stop in tracks, no stepping forward, need a stop immediately. My stomach was turning all over the place and I knew I was in dire straights. I stopped and tried to breathe and regroup so I could make it up to the next port-o-potty stop. Joe stopped with me and I told him to "keep going" He refused. I yelled at him and told him to "get lost" and I would be fine. Finally after I physically kicked him in the calf muscle he took off. (this really all took about 15 seconds so didn't really slow him down much). Anyway, after the pause I was able to pick up running again for about 1/4 mile before the port-o-potties and made my first stop. By this time I felt completely clammy and nauseous but extremely relieved to have made it!! Relief was quickly followed by despair as now I knew I was way off pace to reach my potentially unreachable goal and didn't have anyone to run with even for fun and simply no desire to even keep running. I'm going to shorten this a bit because the entire race is basically the same story. I made a stop after mile 7 and visited with my family who was spectating there. I tried to eat an orange since there was no way I could take a gel. I was positive I was going to pull out and spectate the rest of the race here. I wasn't tired just didn't want to run anymore. My sister Christy talked me into taking each mile for what it was instead of looking at the big picture and I kept going. When it was all said and done I made 5 potty stops but managed to finish the race.

One of my pet peeves is when people make excuses for why they didn't perform well in a race. Some things were out of my control on this day but I really lost the mind battle and had very little fight in me when things didn't go my way. Every part of me wanted to quit the race as the thought of having a recordable time I wasn't proud of was almost worse than having NO time at all.

The positive I'm taking out of this race is:

I ran 13.1 miles regardless and can count it as a training run even a little faster than I probably would have run in training.

When I was actually running not stopping in the race my pace was right at goal pace. Granted it's a little easier to maintain pace with constant breaks..lol!

My last mile was 6:52.

I despise the feeling of personal failure SO much that I don't think I will be able to let it happen to me again...

I did manage to keep going even though I desperately wanted to quit.

SO- I have another HM in 4 weeks....