Janell Runs a Half Marathon, Part 1

I’ve been taking it easy for the past week or so – what with my old lady achy calf muscles and all.
(I wrote about it here.)

Last week, I finally (wo)manned up and scheduled a visit with my trusty physical therapist. He thought that, based on the location and description of my pain, it was mostly likely tendonitis rather than a strained muscle. Either way, he had me take a week off from doing my training runs, perform some ridiculously normal exercises each day, and keep icing it each night.

So, I can’t lie - I was kinda excited to have a legitimate excuse to come home, eat popcorn, and be lazy. Let me tell you, Monday was amazing. I stayed in my elastic waistband pants all stinkin’ day and didn’t even look at my Mizunos. Lazy was awesome.

Tuesday evening rolled around.
Our Facebook TNT group page began lighting up with posts about meeting to run.
That’s when I started to get jealous.
I actually wanted to be out in the snowy night running.
That’s cray cray, my friends.  Pure crazy.

By Thursday, the pressure had gotten to me, and I finally cracked. I hit the trails with Dana and Karen to get in a nice 4.5 mile run before our half marathon on Saturday.   (!!!)

Carb loading on Friday before my long run.

The time off seemed to ease the pain a bit, because I felt great yesterday at the Scottsboro Half Marathon.

We all met at 6 a.m. to make sure we got there in plenty of time. It was a bit nippy out at that hour, but I knew that it wouldn’t be very long until I warmed up.

Saturday morning sunrise on the way on Scottsboro, AL.

Compared to the only other half I’ve done, a Rock ‘N Roll series, this one was tiny. Country Music had roughly 33,000 people, while Scottsboro had a cap of 500. I enjoyed being able to find my Team easily, and I even ran into a few other people that I knew.

At 7 o’clock, we were off to pound out 13.1 miles of rolling, Goosepond Colony hills, and I couldn’t have been giddier.  I love a good challenge, and I had one against myself: beat my previous half time…by a lot!

Tired and sore, but happy. And a little smelly, too! ;)

The whole gang post-race.

Loaded Tater at 50 Taters in Scottsboro, AL. 

Last year, I ran the Country Music Half in 2:39:43.
And I crossed the finish line at the Scottsboro Half in…. 2:07:08!

I couldn’t be happier. :)
Next Saturday, we have a training run in Lynchburg, TN. I hear there’s a killer hill!