A Turn...

By this point, I knew I needed to step up my running game. I had done some 10K's, and had even completed my first half marathon (2:29.46--under two and a half hours, baby!). But I felt like I should be doing even more. Running all the time! Just keep running, just keep running. Like Finding Nemo, but infinitely worse. As I still despised running. It's just awful. Your knees and hips hurt, breathing hurts, your feet hurt. Ok, maybe that's all just me, but still! Everything hurts! Why do this?! Because triathlon. I only kept up with all this running because I wanted to continue to be a better triathlete. I was making progress, I was slowly getting better, and I was slowly getting more lean. It felt amazing! Why would I stop that?!

There is this half marathon in Chicago in January called F3. Because running a half marathon isn't hard enough--let's do it in the dead of winter! My best friend and I decided to do it. The week leading up to the race was fairly mild. Not warm, but not the normal bitter January we were used to or expecting. Low and behold, the night before the race, the storm of the winter descended upon us. We woke up early, and it was awful. Freezing, windy, snow and ice everywhere. We debated back and forth on whether or not to do even do the damn thing! We were sooooo close to just going back to bed. But our frugal mentalities got the better of us and come Hell or high water (or ice and snow and wind or cold), we weren't going to waste that money!

I regret this decision. With every fiber of my being. Well, I don't because without it, I wouldn't be where I am today, but I still kind of do. Worst run ever. Started terribly and only got worse. They didn't clean off the route at all. They didn't even mark the route! You had to run past the finish line and loop back around, which is mentally just exhausting and horrible. I knew I was going slowly, and I knew everything hurt even more than usual, but something just wasn't right. The more I ran, the worse this pain in my knee got. Dammit, I was going to finish this F@#*ing race, but it was agony. I finally crossed the line at 2:44.20. Gross. Frozen. and limping something fierce. Figured I had just pulled a muscle running oddly from trying not to fall on the ice. Little did I know that it was the beginning of a journey that I'm still recovering from...