Ok so if you go all the way back to the beginning of this blog, it started out as a training log to complement my cousin's training blog. We were comparing styles of training against each other to see how they might prepare us for a 100k race.
Well after an injury and much protesting by myself we decided, and thankfully so, to do the 50k instead of the 100k and here is a report from Saturday's Bandera 50k.
First we woke up at 4:30am to eat, get dressed and drive to the race location. 4:30am is an hour that most people never see unless they can't sleep or have a sick kid. The temperature outside was around 10 degrees according weather records for the area. 10 degrees!!! The really crazy thing is I looked it up AND some people in shorts!!
So we start the race at 7:30 a few minutes after the dawn and it gets light really fast but since we're in the valley there is no warmth from the sun. It is cold but my beard is holding steady and my warm clothes were perfect. The thing that made the real difference were the toe warmers. it is no fun to run with cold toes and the toe warmers were absolutely perfect.
Everything was great until about mile 10, supposedly the first 10 were the hardest, however since I was wiped out and hadn't trained consistently for this race the next 20 miles were the hardest for me. People hear that you're running 31 miles and they think the mileage made this race hard. The truth is, if you were to put all the hills back to back and the race was only 5 miles, then it would have been just about as difficult.
At the 12 mile mark I finally convinced my cousin to leave me behind and salvage whatever time she could. She managed to finish in 7:17. I walked/limped and almost crawled to the 15.5mi aid station. There I promptly announced, "I'm done!" continued to a chair and sat down. The volunteers graciously told me to just sit there and think about it. I announced several times I was done. They convinced me to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and I drank two glasses of coke. As I was sitting there thinking, it occurred to me that one day I might have to tell my daughter that she couldn't just quit something because it was hard. And if I wanted to teach her that lesson, I'd have to make sure I believed in what I was saying and had lived it myself. I had also been reading about the power of the Holy Spirit and how has American Christians we don't place a lot of value or believe there is a lot of power in the Holy Spirit. So I prayed, that I would have the strength and ability to finish this race and that I knew it was impossible for me to finish the exact same distance I had just finished by myself. I ran the next 11 miles.
It was nothing short of a miracle in my book, it really completely changed how I felt about marathons and the half-ironman races. I was really surprised because I had tried electrolytes, I had eaten carbs and I had taken water. I had tried to keep my physical needs met and so when I couldn't go further I just figured it was my lack of training or actually just my lack of just plain exercising. 15 1/2 miles was the best I could do. I had only put in about 30 miles of training so it makes perfect sense that I couldn't do this. So that's why, as goofy as it sounds, I really thought it was the Holy Spirit trying to show me that there is power, beyond what I'm capable of. I'm sure scientists and myself could rationalize it away, as electrolyte imbalance or calorie deficiency. But I had taken some of that in and it was more than just "getting my second wind." I did something I was sure I couldn't do. Something I would have bet money on that I couldn't finish.
I think I will always cherish this race because I found my breaking point before half of the race was over and had to rely on my belief that through the Holy Spirit it could be finished.
Way to finish, Cameron! And way to rely on the Holy Spirit! Amazing stuff, that Trinity.
ReplyDelete