Half-Marathon Update!

So today the Boston Marathon is going to be happening, and while I'm not running in that (or anywhere close), on Saturday, I finally ran my first half-marathon--time to check that off my bucket list! It was so intense but also so fun, and I want to run another one as soon as I can, probably in late June. I think it would help me to have something physical to prepare for this summer to help balance me out while I study for the bar exam. I ran pretty much nonstop for the first six or seven miles, at a nice slow 13-minute-mile pace, and during that part of the race I was thinking, this is so easy! Why didn't I do this a long time ago? I want to run another one of these tomorrow! But then . . . reality set in at mile 8. And it's like, I'm SO hungry. And my legs hurt. And I'm really sweaty and I just want to go take a shower and eat a bacon cheeseburger and some fries (which is exactly what I did when I was done). Then I ended up getting off course at mile 8.5 and turning around at one of the water stations when I was supposed to keep going beyond it. The next mile marker I saw, instead of being 9, was 12. And I knew something was wrong because I had skipped 3 miles . . . I definitely considered just going on to the finish line, but I just couldn't. I was determined to do it right and do the whole thing, so I went back and got back on the trail and walked/ ran the rest of it. So ultimately I did 14.1 miles instead of 13.1, but that's ok. I came in last in my age group, but that's also ok. The main thing is that I finished. That's all I set out to do. And now I'll be in recovery mode probably for the whole week, and then I'll start running again next week. I'm going to do some low-impact exercise this week like swimming, but there is no way I can run for a few days considering that I can't even walk like a normal person right now because my knees and legs are so sore. But I'm already in substantially less pain than I was in on Saturday afternoon, so I know I'm on the mend. I have at least two more of these races in mind to do this year because this has now become a competition with myself--next time I'll want to beat my time from Saturday, and then keep getting better from there. But overall, it feels so great to finally check that goal off my list!