Colorado Colfax Half-Marathon - Done!

What a wonderful event and a wonderful day. Yesterday I was all keyed up and worried about what kind of attitude I was going to have during the race. I went to church last night, and just calmed right down. The calm never left me, thankfully.

I decided to enjoy the event. I was determined not to worry about my time, and not to get competitive. I gave myself permission to walk if I felt like it, stop at the porta-potties if I needed (a whole other story there!) and just soak up everything that was the race. And that is what I did. I stopped to use a rest room in a park we passed through... I walked through all of the water stops... I felt just fabulous for the first 8 miles. At a couple of miles, I passed the Cathedral and saw people heading to early Mass... I said a quick prayer of gratitude that I could be out doing this crazy thing! At about 9 miles, I had a stomach ache and felt horrible - and then I heard a friend from the sidelines! My friend Holly came out to greet me! I actually stopped and talked with her and stretched. It was a good thing, I was really tired at that point. My stomach ache did not go away until I stopped running. I don't know what that was about, but it hurt!

In the last mile, I had a new downloaded song on my iPod which was just so so so appropriate, I played it over and over and over. It was "Save the Last Dance for Me" by Michael Buble - and I danced and sang. I am sure I looked like a nut, but it kept me going up a really steep hill at the end of a 13.1 mile course... yikes. I do not know what possessed me to download that song yesterday because I have never listened to this guy before in my life, but I am sure glad I did!

My daughter finished about 15 minutes after I did... she totally enjoyed herself too. I am so glad, she didn't train at all and I was worried about her. She called a few minutes ago to see how I managed the stairs in my house... ow! I am hurting and so is she! But I have all day to do absolutely nothing - I think I will go so far as to order pizza - after I wake up from my nap! I just am so happy to have completed this thing. It was great.

The bad thing? When we got to the race start, nice and early as we should have, we heard the announcement that they had only ONE porta-potty. I am not kidding. ONE. There was a line like you can imagine. The guy ahead of us said that even if everyone used the toilet for one minute, there was no way we would even get in the john before the race started. Imagine the excitement when we saw porta-potties being unloaded from a Ryder Rental Truck.... they found 5 of them, and they were already full of s****. They smelled so bad we were actually gagging. I honestly thought I was going to throw up. But I used the thing and got to the start line in time. My daughter passed, and then had to stop at 7-11 along the way... and lost about 10 minutes there. The other bad thing? remember the race organizer who told me they would have gu at every water stop? I saw not one packet of it, but I had stuffed some in my bra.

Other than that, I can't think of enough superlative adjectives to describe how I feel right now. This course was hard! We ran through three different cities, all the way across the Denver metro area. And there are major HILLS here! Thanks for all of your support, I took all of you with me. You have given me great advice and support over the last few weeks and it made a difference!

THANK YOU!