This isn’t a race recap, because no one wants to read about four miles of chatting with my only real life running buddy in the race and then nine miles of “woo buddy I’m in trouble.” I did run the DRC Half on Sunday, though, and while I won’t say it went well, it did get done, and other than the usual post-race soreness, I’m alright.

I ran by the packet pickup on Saturday morning to at least get the shirt, even if I wasn’t going to run the race. I hadn’t noticed it when I got my pre-race email, but I was apparently bib number 2. (No bib seeding here – I was just the second one to sign up for the race this year.) For some reason, that made me want to run the race. I’m probably never going to be fast enough to get an elite bib number, so might as well get some pictures of me running with a low number bib while I can! I admit, it was a stupid reason to spur me to decide to run. But it did.

I’ve spent all year so far babying myself (while simultaneously making stupid training decisions sometimes, I admit) in preparation for a shiny new half marathon PR that never came. So on Saturday evening, I decided to just go for it and run the race I already paid for. I knew it was going to be slow and miserable, but you know what? I’m tired of being scared of injury and I figured I was planning on taking a bit of a break through the rest of the year anyway, so I was just going with it.

So I got my race kit together and laid out and took the requisite pre-race picture of all the gear and then went to bed nice and early – and then surfed reddit on my phone for two hours because I couldn’t sleep. It’s two nights before the race that really matters, right?

The rest of the morning went well, and I actually got butterflies while I was driving to the race. I remembered all the articles I’ve read about turning nervous energy into motivation and thought about actually being able to do well in the race for half a second. Then I remembered that I hadn’t run more than six miles at a time in two months and got my expectations back in line with reality.

Anyway, not to bore you with the details, but the race was hard and I finished in just under 2:04. The last 5k split was bad but eventually the race was over and I was able to stop moving my legs.

I can’t say I’m proud of the race or even proud of myself for doing it. Honestly, I was just relieved to be done with the race and be able to take the next couple of months off of anything resembling serious training. I’m not planning on running more than 25 mpw for the rest of the year, and I’m not likely to hit that for a while. I do want to hit the gym and see if I can find a good balance between strength training and running to keep myself injury free in 2017.

I really want to make 2018 a good running year. I’ve been spinning my wheels since this time last year and it’s not fun, so I’m trying to make changes to set me up for the stellar year I want to have. But for now, I’m happy to have ended this season by doing something a little stupid that didn’t end catastrophically.