10-Year Runniversary Challenge: Lessons & Insights

I can officially say, “I did it!” Honestly, February was a whirlwind month of running, racing, and dancing the line of running just enough to take on the challenge while resting just enough to keep injuries away. As a reminder, these are the races that I ran as part of my 10-year Runniversary celebration challenge:

• February 6th: Miami Half Marathon

• February 13th: Publix FL Half Marathon

• February 20th: A1A Half Marathon

• February 27th: Gasparilla Half Marathon

When I initially presented the idea of a 10-year Runniversary celebration challenge to my coach, I was excited about the prospect of running my favorite distance all month long. The feeling underlying this challenge was that I somehow went from not thinking I would ever run another half marathon during my first half marathon to loving the distance so much I’m now nearing 60 official completions of the distance. This is my personal transformation (seriously, how is this me?!) and a strong statement about the love I’ve developed for the 13.1 distance over the past almost-10-years. I was also thankful that my coach was on-board with this challenge and the prospect of practicing training workouts in the race setting added to the excitement. How cool is it that I can run race pace in an actual race, but it’s actually a training run for a big race at the end? Yay, right? Well, kind of.

I thought that if I could train for a marathon, I could certainly handle four races in one month. Nearly two weeks out from my half marathon extravaganza and I can see that I was both right and wrong in this thinking. Yes, I could handle the distance, but the racing environment is very different from the training environment. Heck, racing mindset is very different from training mindset. This right here is lesson #1 from my experience:

Racing and training are two different things. Just because I can cover the distances in training runs, doesn’t mean I’ll have the same experience in racing runs.

In retrospect, this is almost a duh-moment for me because I’ve experienced strong training runs and cycles with, in my opinion, poor racing experiences. Basically, training runs don’t perfectly predict racing runs and racing runs don’t perfectly correspond to training runs.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, let me explain what I mean. In training runs, the pressure isn’t as intense because things aren’t as structured. I start when I start and I finish when I finish. I know that training runs are about endurance, building mental strength and stamina, and, if the run doesn’t go well, learning from it while knowing there’s another training run in the future to practice once again. My training runs are also either solo or small group efforts along well-known paths. Let’s also not forget that I am not traveling to different cities and staying in hotels for my training runs.

Racing events, on the other hand, are structured with definitive start times which leads to my not sleeping well the night before a race because I worry I am going to oversleep and miss the start. I also wake up even earlier to allow for time to get to the race area. Races start later than most of my training runs and there are many elements along the course that I cannot control (I’m talking to the sun here for the Tampa race). On a mindset note, I have an almost “fight to the finish” mentality on race day; great for PR days, not so great for survival days. I always know I am going to finish a run I start, but on race day the pressure to finish feels heightened because there is a clock at the finish line waiting to record when I cross the threshold. Once I’m done, I’m done. There is no going back to the race the next weekend to try again.

In training, the runs are an experiment and I get the opportunity to tweak and adjust as I go along in my training. In racing, there is no finisher’s certificate that says, “1st attempt;” it’s all so final. Any attempt to “try again” has to wait until the following year’s event and that’s only if the mental recovery and the reality confrontation of the racing experience doesn’t discourage from the desire to actually try again.

Do I regret undertaking this challenge? Hell no. Sure, I questioned why I thought a challenge like this would be fun, but I have zero regrets. (Cheers to my husband who responded to this question with, “Just like you thought training for a marathon would be fun.”) I ran in new places and my family was able to come along for the adventure. Four weeks of half marathons reminded me that I am physically strong and mentally gritty AF. You know what happened the first time I ran three half marathons in four weeks? I had to stop running for six weeks because of IT band syndrome. Not this time and not ever again (fingers crossed!). And this leads to lesson #2 from February:

Sometimes you need a good challenge to remind you of how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown as a person and as an athlete.

So, there you have it. In true essay format (thanks to my daughter who was writing an essay alongside me as I wrote this blog for the inspiration), I would like to end with a summary:

• Lesson #1 is just because I can do something over and over again in training, it doesn’t mean I have to do it while racing. They just don’t equate.

• Lesson #2 is a reminder of my strength, but also maybe a warning that I need to be more mindful of what I think “fun” challenges are because I am definitely strong enough to accomplish whatever goal I set for myself.

I am grateful that I was strong enough and physically able to do the challenge, but I also celebrated hard when I crossed my final 13.1 finish line. I still love the 13.1 distance, but by the final race, I was so over how long the distance felt. It’s that feeling that made me want my next challenge to be about resting because that “distance feels long” feeling combined with no breaks is a perfect equation for runner burnout. I did something incredible and great. I thought I could do it and I did it. My body held up and did what I asked it to do. Now, I say “thank you” by taking it easy. Creativity flows freely in a rested state and I’m curious to see where my creativity for challenging myself with running takes me next.

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