It’s funny, the way expectations can play on our emotions, our motivation, and our results. When things are more difficult than you bargained for, it can set you back, or it can fire you up. But when you beat your expectations for yourself, it’s always a good day.
I finished my first half marathon of the season this morning. I’ve worked harder over this offseason than I ever have before, and the reward has been apparent. I’ve never, ever been this fit, this early in the year! Last year at this time, I was pretty pleased with myself to be finishing a 5k.
This race exceeded expectations in a number of categories. For Sarah, my running buddy pictured above, it was exceedingly difficult, as she spent the week sick, and wasn’t fully back to health at the race start. But she powered through, finishing her first official Halfie and earning that sticker! Hard-fought is well-earned.
For me, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I hadn’t trained to any distance past 10 miles, I hadn’t rested the day before, and I wasn’t quite sure what my knee was going to do. I only decided on Wednesday of the previous week that I was even doing the race. So I was just going to go out, run easy, and see what I could do. No pressure, no expectations, just a nice, easy, Sunday morning run.
What I definitely didn’t expect were the hills and the wind. The set of hills right at the beginning of the race encompassed a 140 ft climb. That’s not a lot, but I think a lot of us were expecting a nearly flat race, given that it was mostly out-and-back on the bike path. It was a nice little curveball that gave me a little bit of a jump on my usual group, since I’m in the habit of not slowing down much for hills.
The wind wasn’t that terrible, either, owing to the sheltered nature of most of the route, but it was still an issue during a few stretches around the midway point. On the whole, while it was a fairly easy race when compared to others of the same distance, it was still a notch or two harder than I had expected when I showed up.
All that said, my performance beat my own expectations too, by a long way. I had told myself I was just going to jog easy for the race, and I did, but I still chugged out a 2:10 finish, which is a 7 1/2 minute PR over last fall! Thank you, weight training and interval work. For a race I wasn’t entirely sure I could finish when the gun went off, it went surprisingly smooth, and ended with an overwhelmingly positive result!