Mercer Island Half Marathon: There are no limits

I'm all raced out.  I'm officially at the end of my own little game of March Madness that I've been playing.  It started 3 weekends ago with the Hot Chocolate 15K, continued last weekend with the St. Patty's Day Dash, and ended today with the Mercer Island Half Marathon.

And if there's a theme to all of these runs, it's that there are no limits to what my body will do if I ask it.  I've already told you about the Hot Chocolate 15K and the shenanigans of the St. Patty's Day Dash.  Those two races taught me that even when I beat up my body, treat it unkindly, dehydrate it, and deprive it of sleep, it will still perform better than I could have expected.  But those races were "just for fun."  They had no real bearing on the mental account book I keep of my running progress (even though I'm still blown away by my St. Patty's Day Dash average pace).

Today's race, however, really counted in my books.  Today I wanted to do well.  I had goals (a PR of sub 1:50).  There was no joking around with this run.  The Mercer Island Half is not easy.  It is all up and down hills with very few flats.  The roads are all canted, which wreaks havoc on knees and hips.

So I prepared as I normally do before a serious race.  I drank a lot of water on Saturday (and nothing else). I ate a salad, a massive bowl of pasta, and bread for dinner.  I was in bed by 9:30 and asleep by 9:45.  I woke up nice and early to eat my almond butter and banana toast and have time to properly prep my race supplies.  By the time Erica came to pick me up, I was ready to take on this race.

I oddly did not feel nervous before this race.  Typically, before any half or full, I get butterflies in my stomach the morning of the race.  I can't help but think about all the pain I'll be facing in just an hour or two.  I can't help but wonder how strong my mental faculties will be when the pain hits.  I usually turn over and over thoughts in my head of which voice will reign supreme during the race--the voice that says "this sucks, I'm done," or the voice that says "you can do it, just push on through."  Maybe it was the fact that I'd already been at 2 race starts in the past few weeks (even if they weren't nerve-inducing starts).  Maybe it was the idea that I have the Goofy Challenge, the Seattle Half in November, and the Nike Women's Half Marathon all on my list of recent successful activities.  Maybe by the 9th half marathon you've run you simply don't get nervous anymore.

Whatever the reason, I was wary of the lack of nerves.  I like nerves.  Nerves mean I'm not getting cocky and over confident.  Nerves mean I'm still feeling the way normal people feel.  Nerves mean life and reality and fear, a little of which is good for all of us.

But before I had any real time to get nervous about not being nervous, we were at the race start ready to go.

Me and my racing ladies.   Ready to take on another.

We started off at a pace that we all considered way too fast.  But as we kept running, and passing other runners, despite Erica and I's constant self-reminders to slow down, we kept speeding up.  We all had dreadful fears of running out of steam and crashing when we hit the final big hill at mile 11.5, but couldn't quite seem to back off the pace.  So we went full steam ahead and ticked off the first few miles quite quickly.

I think Mercer Island is probably one of the most unique courses I've seen.  It reminds me of the portion of the Amica Seattle Half that goes through tree-lined winding Interlaken, except the whole course is like that.  Lots of curves and bends and little inclines.  You can never see more than a quarter mile of the course ahead of you as you wind through the street the encircles the island.  I saw some great things about this and some not so great things.  Great being that you couldn't see what was coming or how far you had to go.  The miles ticked away quickly when you came around a bend and realized that the next mile marker was all of a sudden right there.

The down side to this winding, blind course was that when you hit a hill, you had no idea how big it was.  You couldn't see the top and therefore had no way of knowing how to gauge how much effort could be expended.  And remember, there were lots of hills.  In fact, from the first mile until about mile 10, it felt like all we were doing was going uphill.  We kept going up and up and up with no downs.  And being that this was a loop course that started and finished in the same place, I didn't quite see how this was possible.  Nonetheless, we kept going up and kept our pace up too.

We had looked at the elevation map on the bus on the way to the race, so I knew where the big hills were (mile 5, miles 8.5-9.5, and then the real doozy from mile 11.5-12.5).  When we hit the mile 5 hill, it seemed like no big deal.  In fact none of the hills really seemed like a "big deal" compared to the Nike hills in San Francisco, the steep portions of Amica Seattle, or even the hills at the end of the Whidbey Island Half.  These were mild rolling hills, which didn't seem so bad when you were on them, but they all added up at the end.  My legs started feeling tired around mile 9.  Things started tensing up and my hips and knees started hurting.  

After getting to about mile 10, we finally started seeing some downhills.  I tried to use these downhills to recover my breathing, shorten my stride again, and regain my mental focus for the mile 11.5 hill.  I felt the whispers of my negative voice enter the back of my brain, but I tried my best to push them back, to stay focused on the mile I was on, and to pull strength from Erica and Ana, who were right there with me.  

And mostly, that worked.  I recovered in time to tackle the mile 11.5 hill.  This actually was a big one.  By the time I got to the top, I was out of breath again and losing steam.  Erica and Ana seemed to be picking up some energy that I didn't have, so I focused on pushing through and staying with them.  When I hit mile 12, I told myself I could make it a mile more.  One mile, no big deal.  I looked at my watch and realized that I was going to make that PR I was looking for, which kept me moving.  There were still two more little, steep hills between me and the finish though.

At the bottom of the second to last hill, all I wanted was to be done.  My legs had very little left in them and felt like lead.  My muscles seemed done.  Somehow I dug deep and found enough energy to get up that hill.  But at the top, I still had a half mile to go and an uphill finish.  A glance at my watch told me I had time for a mini walk break.

But I didn't let myself.  Because suddenly I remembered my team.  And I remembered that there are people who can't run.  I thought of Yanni, one of my teammates whose cancer recently relapsed, who is experiencing some horrendous side effects of a new drug she's on, but yesterday at practice she ran 14 miles.  She pushed through something I can't even imagine.  So for Yanni, who I watched push through Goofy training, and the Goofy Challenge, and now another marathon season, for her I pushed through the last half mile.  It may not be much, but it was all I had to give.

I hit the last short hill and gave every little ounce of energy I had left in my body.  I had nothing left for a sprint to the end.  I just made it there.  And my official finish time: 1:48:32.  I broke 1:50.  I shaved 4 minutes off my PR time from the Seattle half in November.  

The watch stats.  Paces definitely all over the place, but staying
between 7:55 and 8:25.  8:11 average overall.  Seeing this makes me
wonder what I really could have done last week at the Dash.

At the end, I realized why I didn't feel very nervous at the start.  It's because I finally realized that there are no limits to what my body can do.  There are only limits to what my mind will let it do.  At 12.5 when I thought I was done, I recharged my mind, found the motivation I needed to keep going, and simply did it.  If my mind tells it to, my body will find the energy it needs to keep moving.  It is my brain that needs the training.

But my brain has come a long way.  When I look back at the Seattle half 2 Novembers ago, or the San Diego Marathon last June, I realize now that the thing that disappointed me in those races wasn't my body's performance, it was my mind's.  I felt like I had given up.  In my last couple races, my mind has grown stronger because I've gained confidence in my body and myself.  I've trained the voice that says "Yes, you can" to be the loudest voice in my head.  I've trained it to drown out the other voices.

If you told me 2 years ago that I'd be running a 1:48 half today, I would have told you that you were absolutely insanely crazy.  I never in a million years thought that I would make it here.  And that from here, I would think that I could still go further.  Because I believe in myself and what I am capable of.  I believe that there are no limits except in my own mind.

A lesson I think we are all learning.  We all PR'd today.  It was a pretty
amazing race.

Now, after all this March Madness, both my body and my brain are tired.  In fact, I kind of feel like this:

No words are necessary.

I just have to make it one more week and then I get to have my Spring Break.  And for Spring Break, I have absolutely no plans.  I will run a little, relax a little, and accomplish very little.  I think my body and my brain deserve at least that.

In the meantime, I'll keeping pushing on.  Because I know I can.