Part 3: Tick-tock, tick-tock... The count down to the race day begins
Related posts:
Part 2: You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses
(It has been a while since I wrote the last part, but I am taking my story forward...)
(It has been a while since I wrote the last part, but I am taking my story forward...)
As race day got closer, I started panicking. I was so close to chickening out, but my perception changed when someone told me, "Even if you are the last person to cross the finishing line, you are still better than the thousands of people who didn't even muster the courage to sign up and show up for the race!". I think that during the last few weeks before the race, I was mostly focussed on two things:
1) Seeking donations to support my fundraiser
2) Reading motivational blogs to find anything that can fuel my courage
I always believed that fundraising might be the easier out of the two tasks because that is what everyone around me kept saying, but it wasn't that easy. I reached out to the many people I knew personally and professionally, telling them about the cause that I was running for, but very few were really interested in responding to the messages to learn more, and contribute to my fundraiser. But I must say that I did find support from unexpected quarters. A few people I barely knew - who were just acquaintances were amazingly so supportive! There were also some whom I had never met at all, but heard about the initiative and my fundraiser from different sources, and contributed to it. It was all a moderately difficult journey with pleasant surprises in between! I would take this opportunity to give a big shout-out to all the donors who helped me reach my fundraising goal ❤.
I don't think I have read as many motivational blogs in my entire life as I did during the days leading up to my first half marathon. I tried holding on to every bit of encouragement that the writers had to give. There were many helpful ones - from personal experiences, to instructions from running coaches, but there was one blog that stood out the most to me. And I want to share that with my readers here. The writer of the blog talked about a technique that she was introduced to when she ran her first half marathon, to keep her from chickening out during the race. She was asked to dedicate every mile of her race to someone really special in her life. I thought that was a great idea, and I started compiling my list with 13 spots. I needed a strategy for my list, so I thought of the most difficult miles for me in a half marathon - it generally were the first few miles when I needed the push to start, and the last couple of miles where I had to keep going to reach the finish line. So I put the people that mattered the most to me in the first 3 and the last 3 spots, and filled in the rest with names of the other special people in my life. That was like a done deal - once I had it on paper, I felt like I owed it to each one of them to finish my race, and that nothing could stop me from doing that.
Tick-tock, tick-tock... The race day was finally there! I had a tough time sleeping early the previous night, laying down my running gear and bib, keeping the GU-gels ready, and what not! My mind kept racing, trying to figure out if I had missed something, wondering what the next day was going to be like. But somehow I did manage to put myself to sleep, and woke up at 4am to get ready and have breakfast before warming up with a short sprint to the starting point - The SF Ferry Terminal. It was 6am, dark and chilly... but there were about 27,000 energized runners there that morning to participate in the Boston marathon qualifier. I was getting the jitters looking at the crowd that had gathered, but I tried calming myself down. Soon, I found a few others from Team Asha in my coral and started talking to them which seemed to ease my tension a bit. We waited nervously as the previous corals took off, for the next whistle that would start our race.
We were all thrilled when the whistle was blown and we started down the track, everyone hoping to give the race their best. But I felt like something was wrong a while after we had crossed the starting tracker. I got notified about other Team Asha runners in my coral having started the race, but not about me. I had almost covered a mile by then, so it was a difficult decision that I had to make on the spot. Should I keep running and the risk the chance of my tracker not having started (leading to no official records of my first ever half marathon), or should I run back to the starting point and seek help to figure out what went wrong with my tracker (causing me to lose my energy for a good 2 miles for no reason). I made a quick decision and chose to head back to the Ferry Terminal. Once there, I learnt that the chip in my tracker wasn't functioning as expected, and we had to do 3 trials before we got it working. I did not lose time since my tracker hadn't started, but by then I was way behind the slowest person in that race. I felt defeated, sad and hurt because I couldn't see a single runner for miles. I was on the verge of tears, but I remembered my list and my motivation to keep going. I was so thankful to the blog writer in that moment, because if it wasn't for the list I would probably have given up and turned back that day. I would have been a loser even before I had started the race.
I don't think I have read as many motivational blogs in my entire life as I did during the days leading up to my first half marathon. I tried holding on to every bit of encouragement that the writers had to give. There were many helpful ones - from personal experiences, to instructions from running coaches, but there was one blog that stood out the most to me. And I want to share that with my readers here. The writer of the blog talked about a technique that she was introduced to when she ran her first half marathon, to keep her from chickening out during the race. She was asked to dedicate every mile of her race to someone really special in her life. I thought that was a great idea, and I started compiling my list with 13 spots. I needed a strategy for my list, so I thought of the most difficult miles for me in a half marathon - it generally were the first few miles when I needed the push to start, and the last couple of miles where I had to keep going to reach the finish line. So I put the people that mattered the most to me in the first 3 and the last 3 spots, and filled in the rest with names of the other special people in my life. That was like a done deal - once I had it on paper, I felt like I owed it to each one of them to finish my race, and that nothing could stop me from doing that.
Tick-tock, tick-tock... The race day was finally there! I had a tough time sleeping early the previous night, laying down my running gear and bib, keeping the GU-gels ready, and what not! My mind kept racing, trying to figure out if I had missed something, wondering what the next day was going to be like. But somehow I did manage to put myself to sleep, and woke up at 4am to get ready and have breakfast before warming up with a short sprint to the starting point - The SF Ferry Terminal. It was 6am, dark and chilly... but there were about 27,000 energized runners there that morning to participate in the Boston marathon qualifier. I was getting the jitters looking at the crowd that had gathered, but I tried calming myself down. Soon, I found a few others from Team Asha in my coral and started talking to them which seemed to ease my tension a bit. We waited nervously as the previous corals took off, for the next whistle that would start our race.
We were all thrilled when the whistle was blown and we started down the track, everyone hoping to give the race their best. But I felt like something was wrong a while after we had crossed the starting tracker. I got notified about other Team Asha runners in my coral having started the race, but not about me. I had almost covered a mile by then, so it was a difficult decision that I had to make on the spot. Should I keep running and the risk the chance of my tracker not having started (leading to no official records of my first ever half marathon), or should I run back to the starting point and seek help to figure out what went wrong with my tracker (causing me to lose my energy for a good 2 miles for no reason). I made a quick decision and chose to head back to the Ferry Terminal. Once there, I learnt that the chip in my tracker wasn't functioning as expected, and we had to do 3 trials before we got it working. I did not lose time since my tracker hadn't started, but by then I was way behind the slowest person in that race. I felt defeated, sad and hurt because I couldn't see a single runner for miles. I was on the verge of tears, but I remembered my list and my motivation to keep going. I was so thankful to the blog writer in that moment, because if it wasn't for the list I would probably have given up and turned back that day. I would have been a loser even before I had started the race.
Comments
Post a Comment