"Mothers and daughters together are a powerful force to be reckoned with."
~ Melia Keeton Digby
Over the summer, my daughter, Rosie, trained for her first half marathon. This is huge because when she was younger, and she's only 20, so basically for most of her life, she has admittedly hated running. Back in June when she told me she wanted to do this and asked me to write her a plan I was both shocked and thrilled. Not that I showed it. I was like, yea sure. Sounds cool. Happy to help. Whatevs. About two weeks before her race in September she started to have pain in her foot and shortly thereafter was diagnosed with a stress fracture in her metatarsal. Sadly, there would be no race for her. Needless to say she was devastated. She had dedicated so much time and energy to train through the brutally hot summer and she'd really wanted to see it all come together. As we all would. But, such is the sport, right? And the body calls the shots even when we don't like it. Fast forward to October. Rosie had slowly been starting to run again and immediately got the bug to race when she could string a few miles together. I know, shocker. I told her I was running a half on Thanksgiving and suggested she join me for the 5K that was happening at the same time. To which she responded, Mom, can I just do the half with you? Ummm. Maybe?? I said. I wrote up a very cautious plan for her to try and follow over the course of the next few weeks and then we agreed to decide on whether or not to give it a shot the weekend before the race. Which brings us to this race review. That's right, my friends. Rosie and I did a half together on Thanksgiving day. Her first. Maybe of many. With me. I never thought it would happen but always hoped it would. Here's how it played out. I'm going to lean heavily on my pics to share this one so bear with me.
Wednesday night, Rosie and I laid out all of our race gear on the two twin beds in the extra room in our rental. Music was playing and she was checking everything off her list. I was like a pig in clover dancing around the room. She told me she was "nerve-cited" about the race. This is now my new favorite word.
Thursday morning we woke up at 4:45 because we needed to leave for the race at 5:30. I was trying hard to wake up with shitty rental house coffee. Clearly it had not kicked yet at this point. But, I swear I was also excited. It was pitch black outside and honestly felt like the middle of the night so getting fired up was tricky. I was doing my best.
My pre-race meal is eight graham crackers. But, I had forgotten to buy them the day before. So, instead I had 100 of the mini Teddy Grahams that we'd bought at the airport which is the equivalent amount of carbs. Yes, one hundred. It was kind of ridiculous.
We got to the start with no issues, parked and jogged over to grab our numbers. One of the best lines of the day was from Rosie who said, this is nuts, the freaking stars are still out. We both thought that was hilarious.
We got a quick pre-race photo, hugged and made a plan to meet up at the finish. There might have been some tears. I was getting ready to run a half with my daughter for the first time. So, yea. I was kind of out of my mind in the best way.
All right, so the gun went off and I started flying down the street. But why is it so dark, you ask? And that's a great question because if you look down at the rest of our race pics it was clearly bright and sunny while we were running. It's dark because I wasn't paying attention and didn't realize until about a half mile in that I had started with the 5k runners which was going off 10 minutes earlier than the half. I looked up and saw a sign that said half marathon to the left but no one was going left. This is when I realized that this was because there were no half marathoners with me. I took my headphones out and asked a volunteer to be sure.
Nope, he said.
They haven't started yet, you need to get back to the line pronto. Not a bad warmup up tho? Well played. I sprinted back to start, legitimately laughing out loud at myself. I'm sure the 5k runners were like, what is this moron doing? Why would she turn around and go back? Also great questions. Both of them. I barely made it in time to slide back into the start corral. Literally, 1 min and 27 seconds and bam, we were off. Not my best.
Usually I put my phone on 'Do Not Disturb' when I race but I'd forgotten to do it so shortly after I got started the verbal text messages started coming in through my headphones. The first one was a reminder to take my trash out. Super helpful given I was down in FL and could not, in fact, deal with my trash back up in Boston. The second was a text from my daughter, Grace, who told our family group chat that she'd accidentally worn two different shoes to the airport. I immediately burst out laughing. The image of her tired and out of it walking through the airport with two different shoes on was too much. I laughed for a while at this one. Which probably looked pretty funny to spectators. The third was a message from my girl, Ali, to my lady gang from up North saying Happy Thanksgiving and sending love to everyone. That made me smile. There were a bunch more but you get the gist. It's hard to stay focused and run a steady effort when random messages are popping up through my music every couple miles. Fortunately, as you can see by my jazz hands above, I was not taking this race too seriously. For the record, I was trying to give a wave to the photographer here. Clearly I forgot that you really only use one hand to say hello.
In general my legs felt heavy and my body was pretty flat overall. Just no zip in the drive. I guess I'm still recovering from Hartford and, well, honestly I just didn't really care that much. That said, it was still a good, solid push. And to be honest, this is kind of a fun way to race because the pressure was totally off for a change. I just wasn't concerned about my overall time or place and was really out there to get a run in and spend the morning with my daughter.
After the race we took about 1000 photos (obvs she picked the ones I was allowed to use for this post) and then we stopped for coffee before heading back to the fam. I didn't get a photo of us hugging after she finished, but we did and it was beautiful. From hating running to giving it a shot to a stress fracture to getting back on the horse post-injury to running her first successful half marathon. All in a matter of about five months. I was just so happy for her and so proud of what she'd accomplished. And that's pretty much the whole story. This one goes down as one of my all time fav race experiences. Oh, and did I mention that this was the 41st running of this particular event? You can’t make this stuff up. I can not wait to do it again. All of it. She now claims the Boston marathon is on her bucket list. Bring it. You and me, Rosie. LFG.
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