Kyle Hepp

March 16, 2009

The Santiago Half Marathon on April 5th is technically called the Santiago Mini Maraton. But I really don’t like involving the term mini with a race that will have me running for over two hours. There is nothing mini about it for me. In fact, right now, just thinking about race day is daunting.

This will be my first time ever running in an official race, and the longest I’ve ever ran in my life…by a mile, but still.

Last weekend I had to do a long training run 12 mother effing miles.

When I lost 50 pounds I did it by eventually building up to running between 8 and 10 miles every night, and about once a week I’d do 11 or 12. But that was over 5 years ago.

So this past Saturday, I set out full of optimism. “I used to do this all the time, it’s nothing!” I told myself as I trotted along happily.

The first 4 miles breezed by, and I grew even cockier. By the second 4 mile lap my legs were growing tired but I still felt like it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I was doing fine!

At mile 9 I started to die. By mile 10 I was convinced that I would my death would be a slow and painful one on the running trail of Pocuro in Providencia. By the end of mile 10 I could no longer feel my legs. MY ENTIRE LEGS were numb. I wish I were kidding. I also suspected that I may have been losing a toenail and the last place in my lower region to lose feeling was my toes. I got a little upset about that. I already lost pinky when I started this training. One toenail is fine, but two is too much to sacrifice! At this point I wanted to stop and walk, but the only problem was that I was two miles from home still so I knew that if I did slow to a stroll it would take me at least another hour just to finish those last two miles.

At mile 11 a runner bumped into me really hard as he jostled for position at the front of the pack at a stoplight. I was so pissed off but really too tired to do anything about it, even though that would have been grounds for a serious cussing out under normal circumstances. My only satisfaction came when I passed him less than a block later. EAT MY DUST WEON!!!!!! It took all my restraint not to reach out and shove him to the ground like a little kid on the playground pushing her best friend face down into the sandbox…wait what? You didn’t do that too when you were five?

My anger fueled my adrenaline and for the last mile I was able to pick up the pace enough to finish in a respectable 1 hour 54 minutes and 50 seconds. So now I know that in order to do the Santiago Half (NOT mini) Marathon in my goal time of a under a 10 minute mile pace, I just need to get pissed off. No worries, we’re running through the streets of Santiago. I’m sure they’ll be no shortage of jotes to get me fired up.

While I was excited to be able to run 12 miles ago I couldn’t shake the feeling that it really isn’t that great an accomplishment. As I rounded the corner heading home all I could hear was the voice of Dr. Cox from Scrubs in my head, “Well done, there, Barbie. You’re now exactly where you were [five] years ago.“*

*From the Scrubs episode, My Porcelain God. For reference Elliot Reed has to re-learn a procedure that she’s known how to do for years but is suddenly too afraid to perform. When she’s happy with herself after relearning it, that’s how Dr. Cox congratulates her. The quote come from the clip below, but you can watch the whole episode on Youtube. Michael J. Fox guest stars as Dr. Kevin Casey and it’s amazing. One of the best guest stars ever on Scrubs, and there are a lot of them.