Half Marathon

There isn't much more to say about Ocean City right now. Me and some friends leave on the 5th, which is still 3 weeks (to the day!) away. But in the meantime, we're sitting around gazing at textbooks wishing we were already there. I wish I had something else to say about the summer, but there actually isn't anything.

But I don't want this blog to be lifeless in the meantime, so I'm going to do an update.

With pictures.

Just like the good old days.

But shorter.

Segue.

Last Saturday I ran the Chicago Spring half-marathon. That was more or less the biggest achievement of my last few months.

When I was writing my New Years resolutions, running was on my mind and so I sort of haphazardly tossed "Run a half-marathon this Spring" onto the list.

I tried to run when I first came back to school, but sometimes I have the willpower of a small animal and so I quickly gave up on this attempt and hibernated instead. That worked well until Dan brought up the Chicago Spring Half-Marathon and I realized that my vague but good intentions were going to become a reality.

That was like a month and a half before the half-marathon. I resolved to begin training and then waved running aside week after week with my tiny animal paw.

Then all of a sudden it was three weeks before the half-marathon and I hadn't started training. So I began to run with all the determination my hibernation had been saving up.

I scaled up way quicker than I thought I could. I used the demeaning strategy of telling myself each workout would be way worse than the last one.

"4 miles? That's longer than the longest run you did during Track. Just think how much your lungs will burn."

"6 miles? That's 50% longer, and you were dead after 4 miles."

"8 miles? You've never done that before in your life. You're going to start walking."

"11 miles? Ha ha ha ha."

And while experienced runners around me told me how foolish I was for scaling up this quick, I relished in the satisfaction of realizing each run wasn't quite as bad as I had told myself it would be.

Then all the sudden things went south.

I took a 5 mile run after the 11 mile one and was almost immediately hit with severe shin pain. I've gotten shin splints easily in the past, so at the one mile mark I did a careful evaluation of the situation, assessed the state of my body ... and kept running through the pain.

That evening, I could barely walk. It was all the pain that had grown familiar during high school basketball. During basketball I hadn't done anything to take care of my shins and had just taken it easy. But I didn't have the time to take it easy now. So I went to Google and popped in 'causes and treatment for shin splints'.

There were a variety of factors that could cause shin splints -- worn-out tennis shoes, wearing flip-flops constantly, pointing your toes in when you run, running on concrete, scaling up your running distances quickly. These all had one important thing in common.

There were several treatments too, like icing or stretching or getting new shoes. But the most important thing every website said was, "Rest your shins!"

I didn't have time for that! I had a week and a half. So I iced my shins, took ibuprofen, bought new shoes, and stretched several times a day. Even the dumb-looking stretches.

My dad says this works.

And I tried to keep doing short runs to stay in shape, which was entirely counterproductive. After taking the three days before the half-marathon off altogether, I woke up Saturday morning with deep aches in my shins.

So I gave a farewell kiss to my kidneys, took six ibuprofen, and crossed my fingers.

In the end, modern medical marvels worked magic and the drug overdose buried the pain in a haze until after the race. The day turned out to be pleasantly cool, Dani and Danny came along to watch, I got the time I wanted, and the race actually went fine.

Or, at least not quite as bad as I had told myself it would.