FBF #2: The Hibisucs Half

This past Memorial Day, I ran my first half marathon! Shortly after the New Year, I decided this would be one of my New Year's "resolutions, " or goals as I prefer to think of them. This goal was partly inspired by the fear idea of turning 30 in approximately 6 months from that time, and wanting to push myself both mentally and physically before that milestone arrived.

I would not consider myself a "runner," so to say. I do run 2-3 times a week, short distances, only 1-3 miles at the most just for the sake of exercise. I occasionally run 6 miles when I am feeling extremely motivated, and about a year and a half ago, I ran my personal longest of 10 miles. I figured that if I had run 10 miles in the past, training up to 13.2 miles in the next 5 months before the race would be an achievable, while still challenging goal. So, before I could procrastinate or talk myself out of it, I went online and signed myself up for the Hibiscus Half Marathon in Honolulu. Now that I was officially financially committed, serious training had to commence.

I found a running plan through Hal Higdon that looked easy enough, with slow, incremental increases in running distances over time. His plan called for 3-4 short runs a week with strength training, and one long run. The short runs started out at 3 miles, and the first long run was only 4 miles. Each week these short and long runs would increase in distance, and by the end of 12 weeks, one was supposed to be half-marathon ready. I was feeling confident in this seemingly manageable 12-week plan, as I had nearly 20 weeks before my race! Unfortunately, training turned out to be much more difficult than I had anticipated.

I was feeling strong and confident in January, at the beginning of my training. I was able to run my 3 mile short runs consistently at 9:00-9:15 minute per mile pace. I hit a small set back when my family came out to visit, and I too joined in on the vacation festivities (and then some), taking nearly two weeks off from running. It took some time to bring my speed back up, but even still, I was clocking in at 9:45 minute per mile pace. Although slower than before, anything under 10 minutes still makes me happy! Since I originally had 8 weeks longer than the 12-week running program, I wasn't worried about this temporary set back and took that first month of training easing my way into the half marathon running program by choosing to run only 3-4 mile distances. I wanted to build a solid foundation and baseline pace from which to jump off from, before I started increasing my training and distances. Furthermore, I wanted to make sure I didn't burn myself out by jumping into something over my head and charging forward too quickly. I wanted this to be enjoyable. Each time I went out for a run, I wanted to be reminded that this wasn't something I had to do, but something I wanted to do for myself!

After the first month, I decided it was time to start upping the distance and to start following the program more religiously. However, I had the most difficult time breaking the 4 mile distance on my "long" runs. After consulting with my running guru, aka my good friend Amy, who has recently become a running addict recently finishing both her first half marathon and first full marathon, I realized I needed to stop looking at my watch and focusing on my pace during these long runs. My new goal was to just complete the distance set forth on my long runs, without stopping, regardless of pace. And lo and behold it helped. My mileage started increasing on my long runs, and by continuing to focus back on my pace during my short runs, my times during my long runs naturally started to get better as well. Before I knew it, what were once considered my long runs at 4-6 miles, which I barely and miserably completed in the beginning, were now my short runs that I was completing at paces of 9:06, 9:01, and even an 8:45 minute/mile pace!!!!! By the end of March/beginning of April, I could definitely see all of my hard-work and consistency paying off. I was up to 8 miles on my long runs and was able to complete that distance at a 9:17 average pace. I could hardly believe how much my body was able to accomplish and all the growth that I had made in only 2.5 months!

However, around this time I started to develop hip brusitis. My hip pain didn't always start right away, but it definitely reared it's ugly head at some point throughout every run. Some days it was just a dull ache. Other days, it was a sharp shooting pain that had me grimacing the entire run. To add insult to injury (literally), at the end of April, I rolled my foot. The pain was immediate, and it was intense. Luckily, I was only a street from my house and I hobbled back home. I applied R.I.C.E. (rest, immobilization, compression, and elevate) methodically, hoping that the pain would subside over time. After taking nearly two weeks off from training, and still having shooting pain every time I took a step. or put any weight on this foot, I made a trip to the doctor to make sure I didn't have a hairline fracture. At this point in my training, I was only a month away from the Hibiscus Half and anxious to be back hitting the pavement again in order to continue my race preparation. After nearly 4 months of dedicated training, and with my goal now in sight, I was more than willing to push through the pain as long as I knew I was not creating further damage.  It turns out that I had acute tendonitis in both of my peroneal tendons in my foot.  And while painful, my doctor gave me the okay to keep running through the pain if I wanted to (although she suggested another 3 weeks of rest ideally), and prescribed me Naproxen for the pain.

Well 3 weeks of rest, I did not have. I had already taken 2 full weeks off from running, and was nervous about the gains that I had already lost.  My first run back was brutal and quite demoralizing. I started with a couple of short runs, and I felt like I was back to where I started 4 months previously with times of 10:22-10:38 minute per mile paces. However, I cut myself some slack on the time and next attempted a long run. I only had two weeks left to train, and I needed to see if it was possible with my current injuries to run any sort of decent distance. I completed two more long runs before race day: an 8 mile with an average pace of 10:31, and an 11 mile with a pace of 11:28. The 11 mile run was torturous, and I found myself so discouraged with only a week until the half.  Not only had I planned to train all the way up to 13.2 miles before race day, I had much greater expectations for my pace at this point and at this distance. This last run made me question whether I could even complete the half marathon, regardless of time. While my foot was improving, I had had to stop 5-6 times during the course of this run in order to stretch my hip, which was excruciatingly painful. It was to the point where I was audibly whimpering as I grimaced through my run. Yes, I know you should listen to your body but I am a Willett by birth afterall, and the competitive drive in me wouldn't allow myself to quit before I finished those 11 miles. I didn't know what to expect come race day, and I even considered dropping down into the 15k (approximately 9 mile) category, or whether I should even bother showing up to run at all. To say I was frustrated is an understantment, as I struggled internally with my competitive nature versus what my body was trying to tell me.

You can see my split times increasing with each mile as the pain becomes more intense, and borderline unbearable, towards the end.

On top of everything else, there was one more debilitating ailment, which I have yet to mention, that had been consistently troubling me both throughout and before this entire process. That pesky condition was, and continues to be, my recent development of panic attacks. The first time I experienced a panic attack, I wasn't quite sure what was happening. I was feeling light-headed. I had difficulty swallowing and breathing. I started experiencing a tingling feeling, starting in my fingers and working it's way up my hands and arms. I was convinced I was having an allergic reaction causing my throat to swell up, or possibly even a stroke. The worst part of all of this was that this happened at school. Thankfully, it was the end of the day and one of my friends said she would drive me to the doctor. However, my fear caused the conditions to worsen, and the nurse at school thought it would be best to call the nearby paramedics. I agreed as long as she asked them not to come roaring up to the school with their sirens blaring and lights flashing. Unfortunately, that is against protocol, and I was beyond mortified at the scene that was made, right as school was letting out. Thankfully, once the paramedics informed me that what I was experiencing was only panic attack and that nothing more serious was actually occurring, my symptoms gradually began to subside.

Since then however, I have experienced countless other attacks, and many much worse than that first. There were times in the beginning where Jordan had to come home from work to be with me. He sat with me on our living room floor for hours as he coached me through slow breathing. In those times, it took all of my concentration to block out any outside thoughts, and focus solely on breathing. I tapped back into lessons from an old yoga class in Florida about coherent and mindful breathing; imagining your breath going down your body, circling at the base of your belly as you breathe in for 5 seconds, and then, slowly, reversing this same path as you breath out for 5 seconds. Those first, hours-long attacks were the worst. It felt like no matter how long I concentrated on breathing, I wasn't able to regain control. If I allowed myself to analyze how much time had passed, the physical sensations my body was experiencing, or any other thought outside of breathing in for 5 seconds, breathing out for 5 seconds, worry and fear crept back in, and any progress that I had made in stimulating my parasympathetic nervous system to calm my body quickly flew out the window. Those first few panic attacks felt like a complete out of body experiences. It's called depersonalization, where the combination of fears and physical sensations like light-headedness, fogginess, disassociation, cause you to feel disengaged and detached from your surroundings. It's just another one of the many symptoms that becomes increasingly distressing and which further convinced me that what I was experiencing was not normal. I truly feared that I was dying. There were multiple times where I would suddenly jump up off the living room floor during these times and tell Jordan, no this isn't right, I don't feel right, I think we need to go to the hospital, call 9-1-1, this isn't normal, I'm scared. I'm so scared Jordan. There were other times, too many to count, where I was so desperately afraid of falling asleep because of the fear that I would stop breathing if I wasn't consciously couching myself through it. In those times, I would often shoot straight up out of bed multiple times throughout the night gasping for air. That fear of falling asleep at night, caused me to be so thankful every morning that I woke up the next day. It's was, and continues to be, a torturous cycle.

I made an appointment with my doctor, and despite telling her I didn't think I was stressed out by anything to cause these episodes, she prescribed me a low-dose, daily anti-anxiety with the hope that it would prevent further panic attacks by addressing whatever subconscious stress I had going on, as well as an "as needed" medication for allergic reactions/anxiety attacks (which turned out to be nothing more than benedryl). The coming weeks I continued to be plagued by these panic attacks, which left me paralyzed with fear and unable to function in any setting outside of sitting on my front porch, or on the cold tile of the living room floor, breathing. In for 5, out for 5. When that didn't work, I began pacing the house or incessantly doing dishes or any chore I could find, trying to busy my mind and focus on something else outside of myself. The fancy prescription for benedryl did nothing to help my intense panic attacks, and the daily anti-anxiety only left me feeling foggy, slightly unstable, and gave me constant headaches. These symptoms alone could trigger a panic attack in themselves as it became a habit for me to analyze every physical and emotional sensation in order to determine whether a panic attack was coming on.  And while that may sound counter-intuitive, giving myself a panic attack out of fear of having a panic attack, I developed a form of agoraphobia, so to say. I became constantly worried of having a panic attack when I was anywhere else but home. I was scared of making a scene or collapsing (although I have never fainted or collapsed) at work, at the gym, on a run, etc. etc. etc. That fear paralyzed me. In social situations, I realized I was hardly engaging because I was so focused internally on how I was feeling in order to quickly identify any feelings that weren't normal and intercept any problem at it's earliest signs, if and when it arose, so that I could remove myself from any potentially embarrassing situation. There were days when I barely made it through work. On the car ride home, I just prayed to God that I could safely make it back to my house; that I could fight the feeling of losing control just long enough to avoid crashing or hurting someone else. I would check my reflection in the rearview mirror, feeling like my face was melting of strength and going slack from the top down, as I literally fought, yelled, and urged myself with every bit of strength I had, to stay engaged. I slapped my cheeks angrily as if to combat and keep away an outside enemy that was trying to take over, hoping that the pain would keep me present.  If I could just get home, I thought, and then, if I were to die, I would at least die in the comfort and privacy of my home, without making a scene. Crazy, I KNOW! But that's how intense and real these physiological changes are that take place!

What makes the situation worse is that no two panic attacks are the same. It's hard to feel safe or comfortable, especially when I am alone, when each panic attack is so different from the last. It can be any combination of symptoms: chest pain, feeling like I can't get a full breath or that my chest won't expand; a tingling sensation in my fingers, up my arms, into my neck, ears, face, and lips; numbness in my face and lips; dry mouth and tongue creating a feeling of my throat closing up and difficulty swallowing; dizziness, lightheadedness, a dissociative state; feeling like I'm losing all strength in my face and alertness in the present moment; the fear of having a stroke or that these symptoms are a sign of something more serious happening. I can't tell you how many trips I make to the bathroom during these episodes to check my complexion, the size of my throat, or hold out my arms and smile to make sure one side of my body isn't losing strength or drooping. After a couple trips to the on-base fire station and another 9-1-1 phone call, I made a second appointment at the doctor, where I told her again, I'M NOT STRESSED OUT (well I wasn't, except for these darn panic attacks). I was prescribed a different medication to deal with the intense panic attack episodes. I call this medication my "magic pill," because after feeling like you are dying for hours on end, multiple days out of every month, having a medication that can take all of those feelings away in 30 mins to an hour truly felt like magic. I was so thankful that I no longer had to focus on breathing for hours on end, many times to absolutely no avail. My only savior previously had been becoming so exhausted that I eventually fell asleep under Jordan's watch. And while this new medication eventually knocks me out anyway, at least it is now without the irrational fear of dying in my sleep.

While I am thankful to now have a medication that helps me cope with these episodes, there still has not been any resolution to source of the problem. So while having the medication on hand takes away part of the fear I previously experienced over the mere thought of another panic attack, and therefore, cuts down on the number I do have, I still experience random panic attacks on occasion (1-2 a month versus 1-2 a week). Long story (not so) short, these panic attacks, even with the medication, were a major setback during my training. After each panic attack, I was plagued with residual chest pain, tiredness, uneasiness and shortness of breath for days on end, which left me completely uncomfortable doing any sort of cardiovascular activity and therefore unable to train according to my schedule.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, my training turned out to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. I expected training for a half-marathon to be challenging in itself, but my injuries and health complications were frustrating and unforseen hurdles in the road that I had to jump over along the way. Two days before the run, as I picked up my race packet and bib number, I was still undecided and completely torn about what to do. If my last 11 mile run was any indication, 13.2 miles was going to be ugly. However, as much as my body was screaming, quitting the race wasn't in my being and dropping down to the 15k felt like a cop-out that I would ultimately regret! There are a million and one excuses in the world you can find not do something, and while some may be legit, I refused to have any one of these excuses take away from something that I had fought so hard and come so far to achieve! I wanted to feel the sense of accomplishment upon crossing the finish line and to feel proud of completing this months-long, fought and sought after, goal! I didn't want an excuse, and I didn't want a cop out. I wanted to run the race. As I looked down at my bib number, I decided to throw out my precious 9:00-9:15 minute per mile goal and set a new goal, to finish.

My alarm went off at 4am on the day of the race, and immediately a million excuses and negative thoughts flooded their way into my waking, barely-conscious mind, It can't be time already! Why on earth did I think this would be fun? And I am paying money to do this?!?! I'll probably have to walk or call Jordan to pick me up anyway, what's the point? Getting out of bed that morning was difficult, but I begrudgingly tossed aside the warmth and coziness of my comforter, and with it, all of those negative voices in my head, and forced myself out of bed before I could be tempted to hit snooze button (again). I proceeded downstairs, thanked God for whoever the man was that invented coffee, and fueled up on oatmeal and berries. We arrived down to Diamond Head in Honolulu by 5:00am, while the rest of the sane world was still comfortably tucked in their beds and enjoying sleeping in on this Memorial Day Sunday. And by we, I mean Jordan and me. I was so thankful that Jordan, without complaint and willingly-so, sacrificed sleeping in on a holiday weekend too, in order to support me and cheer me on. I stood amongst the crowd of other insane masochists early risers, stretching my hip and warming up my legs, not quite sure how this was going to go. I told Jordan to keep his phone on him just in case, and that I couldn't really promise him any sort of reliable time window for when he could expect me to be finishing. As the horn sounded, and the masses began moving towards and across the finish line, I put in my headphones and reminded myself of my one simple goal: just finish the race, even if you have to be the turtle.

Wow, did I surprise myself. Not only did I LOVE every moment of the run (so weird), I managed to average a 9:40 min/mile pace!!! I could hardly believe it as my GPS running app on my phone kept spitting out my time and distance stats at every mile along the way. Each mile I completed under 10 minutes gave me the strength, and provided the motivation, for the next mile. I'm not quite sure when my goal changed along the course of the run, but I do know, I was no longer content with just being the turtle. I kept waiting for my hip or my foot to start bothering me, or my pace to gradually slow. However, every mile, my reported time continued to surprise me. Especially so because the course was much hillier than I had expected or trained for. By the 8th mile, when the fatigue began to tried to set in, I decided I wasn't giving up now. I set a new goal: to finish out this race under a 10:00 minute/mile average pace. With this new goal as motivation, I began to push even harder to overcome my body's natural inclination to slow down over time as my legs became heavier and each stride became more laborious. Mile 9 actually turned out to be one of my best times, tied with my very first mile of the race! I honestly couldn't believe it when I hit the 11-mile marker and only had 2 miles to go. My hip and foot were behaving themselves, or perhaps the naproxen finally kicked in to numb most of the pain, and I was still feeling great. I ran those last two miles with a giant smile on my face, finishing my last mile at 9:12 (my fastest of the run) and crossed the finish line in disbelief. I wasn't even out of breath or really exhausted as Jordan noted, and knowing that now, I probably could have pushed myself even harder than I did. After ending my run on my GPS running app, I realized that I must have taken the outside lane on the course as well, as I clocked in at 13.95 miles instead of only 13.2. Gosh, how I wish I would have jogged an extra .05 farther past the finish line to make that an even 14 miles! As Jordan and I meandered through the crowds post-race, I began to think to myself, well, that's over, what comes next? "Breakfast?" Jordan asked, as if answering my silent thoughts. Yes, breakfast sounded good.

The course was absolutely beautiful, wrapping up around iconic Diamond Head, the sun rising over the peaceful, calm waters of the pacific to greet us as we ascended to the top and conquered the first, and largest, hill of the race. We even enjoyed a light, refreshing sprinkling of rain.

I can hardly believe I ran for 2 hours, 14 minutes and 31 seconds without stopping, as well as, maintained such an improved pace from my previous two, long training runs.

Race course elevation versus my training course elevation. I trained on a predominately flat course, which made me that much more impressed with my race pace.

Still smiling as I come to the finish line. You can see me through the crowd in the white and orange.

As weird and self-congratulatory as it feels to say, I could not be more proud of myself for completing this first half-marathon. I was actually quite overcome with emotion upon finishing the race, reflecting back on all that I had fought through to get to this point, most especially, my panic attacks. Although feeling silly, I quickly tried to hide my misting eyes from Jordan's notice. However, it not only felt like such a great accomplishment in physical strength, which I had originally sought after, but more so, such a great triumph in mental strength. I have such a renewed appreciation for the gift of health and what my body is capable of, and it is truly something I hope to never take for granted again. Finishing the race that morning, I was definitely on a high and wasted no time jumping on the computer and scouring the internet to answer my "what's next" question by finding the next half-marathon in our area. After all that I experienced training for this first one, I was, and still am, excited and anxious to see just how much my body and mind are capable of accomplishing when I am injury-free, and at my very best. Unfortunately, living on an island doesn't provide much opportunity in that way, so I may have to wait a year for the Hibiscus Half to return again next spring.

Along this journey, I searched for, and tapped into, a number of inspirational running quotes for motivation on those days where I just didn't feel like training. Of all the quotes I found, the one that I kept close to heart and which most inspired me during this Memorial Day half-marathon was this one: "I run because I can. When I get tired, I remember those that can't run, what they would give to have this simple gift I take for granted, and I run harder for them."

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