Outta Your Mind

Ask my high school track coaches how much I like running...they would laugh and say "you must be joking, because Stephanie hates running". And it's true...I did track as a social event and really would've been content to do a few jumping events at a meet and call it a day. They...however...had other plans for me. It was decided the 800m was the perfect run for me...and I despised it. If you don't know...the 800 is the most awful form of torture at a track meet. 2 laps around the track, essentially sprinting. I would get so nervous and so worked up I was often in tears before meets.

I'm not sure when it began to change, but after a while I didn't hate running. Over the years I would still go for an occasional run and I put "Run a 10k" on my bucket list. So I ran the 10k...with little training and finished in decent time. "Well that wasn't so bad", I thought, and changed the goal to "Run a half marathon".

Now maybe this is where I got a little crazy. But lots of my friends do races regularly, so I knew I'd have training buddies. K. and I decided if we picked a fun race, we'd be more likely to be excited and prepare. She was living in San Francisco for the summer, so we chose the Wipro San Francisco Half Marathon. It started down on the Embarcadero, you ran along the water, then got to run over the Golden Gate Bridge!

You'd think signing up in January for a race in July would be plenty of time to prepare...yet it somehow wasn't. I did really well for awhile...but then it got hot, and I got busy, and was in Hawaii the week before the race. Basically I'm really good at making excuses. Then once I made it to SF, me and K. were so excited to see each other we were up drinking wine and eating popcorn well into the night. (oops)

When the alarm went off at 4:30 the next morning (ugh) we thought to ourselves "oh well...just think of it as a nice long morning run!". The start time was excessively early and in true SF style, we were greeted with fog. The race started out well...the first half we really surprised ourselves! And then we started to fall apart. I'd been having knee troubles all summer from running and K. had issues of her own...needless to say our time wasn't the best. We also slightly underestimated the amount of hills on the course (or the fact the entire Golden Gate Bridge is a gradual hill...).

Over all though it was a fun experience, even if I did hobble around the next day or two. And now we know better for next time! K. is much more motivated than me and is running a FULL marathon in December...but as of now I think I'll just stick to the half. We're already trying to pick a fun one for next spring! Napa? San Diego? Vegas? (let's be real...Vegas is a terrible idea for a race). I figure I might as well keep doing races while I'm young and I can!

I've talked to my old track coaches since then...and they can't believe I'm voluntarily running races. Apparently back in the day I really could've been great at the 800m if I was motivated (so they say). I don't know though...I still think sprinting a half mile sounds awful.