Eryn's Half Marathon

I was kinda starting to get desperate to loose weight after having my sweet little Chant man.... I needed to do something drastic.....So I had decided to run The Cedar City half marathon with my frined and co-worker Gynene. She is so amazing! She introduced me to all of her running friends (the summerlin striders-they are amazing too) Every Saturday I would wake up and leave the house at 4:30 to meet my new running friends at the bottom of Mt Charleston. All of us would pile into one vehicle and ride up to the top for some great downhill training. Oh, and I forgot to mention...I only had 9 weeks to train for this. So I found a 12 week training schedule on active.com and modified it just a bit. Each Saturday I would add 1 mile. I could finally tell that my training was starting to pay off. In fact...here is one of my FB posts, "Running down mount Charleston was so pretty today! I even ran right by 3 dear! I ran 10 miles and surprised myself w a time of 1hr 25min. Average 8.5 min/mile. YEA! :) its gunna be a great day!" Not only was I making good time...I was really starting to enjoy running! Two Saturday's before the race I was planning on running 12 miles...Yeah that didn't happen. At the begining of my run that day, my knee really started to bother me. As I got to mile 10 that's when the I really started feeling pain.  But silly me I pushed myself one more mile and finished 11 miles that day. I had to walk the last mile because my car was parked at mile 12. Even walking that last mile was painful. My knee seriously felt like it didn't want to work anymore. It felt so tight and I could hardly even bend it. I don't have the best knee to begin with anyway. Here is a visual for ya. My beautiful knee is the one on the right so lets just say that I've always kinda had issues. lol

So during that week I kinda took it easy in hopes that I wouldn't feel that same knee pain again next Saturday. So the Saturday before my race I wanted to taper off a bit so the plan was to only run 9 miles. I took an 800 IB profen, rubbed tigers balm all over my leg, and stretched really good before my run. My knee held up okay for the duration of my run but  the pain I felt afterwards was too much. The rest of the day was kinda tough, It hurt to go up and down stairs (I had to go down them backwards) and It even hurt to bend and to straighten my leg. Walking kinda bothered me too. My parents were very concerned and convinced me not to do my race that next weekend and to get my knee better before running a half marathon. So I finally came to terms with the fact that my knee just wasn't ready for a half marathon. The thing that killed me most was...I knew that could do it! My body was conditioned for running long distance and I didn't feel over exerted. It's just because my stupid knee wasn't 100%. And I just kept wishing that my body could be perfect again!....

I had offically decided not to run. (yes i cried about it.) 

I have a friend (Steve Mathews) that happens to be a certified marathon trainer. When I told him I wasnt going to run, He asked why. After telling him my symptoms he said,"Eryn i've got good news...you can still run!" I was beyond puzzled. He told me about the "IT Band" and show me how to treat it. I did some research on my own and realized that was a big part of my issue. I had decided to RUN AGAIN!! However, "time" was not on my side. With only 5 days left I treated my IT Band the best I could. Still not recovered, I went anyway. In our group (the summerlin striders) there were 14 of us. We all carpooled up to Cedar and shared hotel rooms. The night before the race we all ate at pizza factory and loaded up on carbs. Then we went to the park to pick up our packets.

I
I got number 207, so I set that as a goal time. Even though I secretly wanted to finish in under 2 hours.

We all woke up early that morning and met at the park where we took shuttles up the canyon to the starting line. It was pretty cold up there so they had a few of these fire pitts ready when we arrived.

Here is the whole group at the starting line just moments before the gun fire.

Feeling just a tad nervous... The race began. The first 4-5 miles of the course was a pretty steady downhill. Naturally you would want to open up your stride and soar down the hill but in order to preserve and protect my knee I had to do just the oppisite. The first 3-4 miles people were just passing me up. That totally sucked! I felt as if I was going to come in dead last. Right around mile 5 I started passing people that had passed me earlier. picking them off one by one made it kinda fun.

Here I am coming out of the canyon. It was so beautiful! I specifically remember passing this girl in the yellow. She had somthing that was rattleing on her feet everytime she took a step.

(very annoying)