I don’t know how this all happened, I really don’t, I mean I can list it out in order and say “yea that happened” but mentally I can’t wrap my head around how I went from “feeling it” to downright cheating. I remember being really excited about it and in the weeks leading up leaving for FL I felt REALLY good about running, like a legit feeling of “holy shit I can DO this” and totally proud of myself. Totally proud of how far Robin and I had come from like couch to 5k to this… like we could do this shit! My times were getting better, I was focused on my health and getting faster, and then I wasn’t.

I was feeling REALLY shitty and exhausted for no damn reason. Went to the doctor to discuss what was going on in my training since I was done with my physical therapy and my knee felt great …but now I was exhausted out of nowhere and what in the world is WRONG with me… am I dying? She laughed at me, we’re cool like that so don’t get the wrong idea, and jokingly (yet seriously) asked if I was pregnant. HA!! I have PCOS and it took $10k and countless drugs over the course of a year to have my son, not to mention my husband was gone like 6 days out of the week, there was no way… just no. She upped my dosage of anxiety meds and said to just enjoy my vacation, “if you finish you finish”, if not I’m doing better than 90% of the population who don’t even get five thousand steps a day. But I wanted to finish! I wanted to show that my 300+ pound ass could do it! I hold my weight well because while the scale says I’m 52% body fat, I know a good deal of it is muscle. I can lift like a MOFO people, especially with my legs and my back. I’m strong. I can do this…

All things I said until two weeks before the race when I puked during a training run one fateful Saturday morning. I took a pregnancy test on a whim, because why the fuck not, just reassure myself that everything was fine because the doc made her comment and it can’t possibly be an issue. Until it was and the two lines showed up. This must be faulty, I thought, too old to be accurate (we hadn’t been trying so these were all leftover tests from when we were TTC for my son)… I was concerned with the puking and the positive and immediately drove my svety ass to urgent care to get a blood draw confirmation…. Which was just that… confirmation that I was pregnant. SAY WHAT!? Was told to stop the anxiety meds and in the next 48 hours I broke out into hives, terrified I ate something wrong, I overhauled everything in our fridge, by Wednesday the hives were out of control and even my ears were swelling up. This is when the urgent care doctors explained I was having “stress hives”. Fun shit I didn’t know existed. PSA people, stress from an unexpected pregnancy just weeks before you leave for an expensive trip to do a run is some real shit. *the more you know*

I still ran, without anxiety meds and endurance drinks, worried about blowing up the way I did with my son I figured I needed to fight the fatigue and keep going. Which I managed to do pretty successfully, until the night before the race when I started puking from what I’m assuming was anxiety without the meds that I usually used to combat it. I had a game plan to pace myself with a friend I was meeting from Cali at the race. He had finished several races with his wife and figured he could help me pace with thousands of people around me. Here’s the thing I didn’t know about runDisney races and learned VERY quickly: corrals are just like farm corrals, you are pinned in with thousands of other people and no one gets a quick start, people slow down RIGHT in front of you, and people will cheer you as they fall behind you. We started the race and had a VERY slow first two miles, at which point we stopped in America at Epcot to drop a deuce. That whole having to poop while running, that shit is ALSO real…because I took the quickest mother of all dumps ever in my life! Noticed that others were stopping too and was so glad I got to the restroom before the line for stalls showed up. I was no fan to the crowded areas as they slowed us down even more but we did manage to stay in front of the “pacers”. Also something I learned about races, they have people that run AT PACE with ballons/t-shirts to let you know that if you’re behind them at the checkpoints (mile 3, 6, and 10 for this race) then you will be picked up and YOU DO NOT FINISH… long story short, if you’re behind them you’re going too fucking slow…. Guess who was behind them at mile marker 2… ME (well Steve too but that’s obvious). So my friend being the good friend that he is says “you’re pregnant just slow down and let them pick you up, you can run again later”. I love Steve, but that was not what I needed to hear. I told him to go on without me and started to walk. He ran like a zombie victim and got WAY ahead of the pacers. I walked for 2 minutes and said fuck it, I can run and I fucking RAN…got to the pacers and saw them just STANDING THERE… like wtf people. I just ran my ass off and y’all are just standing here?

They say, almost in unison, “we were going too fast” followed with the one saying “you’re still ahead of pace, and anyone that gets here in the next 8 minutes, so keep going girl you got this!” I jogged and saw Steve hunched over on the side of the now VERY open road. Amazing how the congestion clears up after mile marker 3… I told him my great news and encouraged him to stay with me… only to hear of his plan “I’m going to mile 5 or 6 then I’m going to cut across the highway and walk the rest of the way”… I argued with him as we jogged. I held my ground that we would finish this the right way and FINISH until mile 5 when the pacers passed us and I felt the urge to vomit myself… at mile 5.5 we pretended to stop at the port-a-potties and crossed to the other side (or as I like to tell myself, to the darkside), we were just as svety as everyone else was at their mile 11. We walked the rest of the way. Cheering others on and at one point stopping to sit on the benches. We waited until his brother in law came up (legit on his mile 12) and I went on with him while Steve waited for his wife to finish with her. I crossed the finish line and while people cheered me I felt like a total fucking failure.

A TOTAL FUCKING FAILURE

I waited for Robin and couldn’t wait to tell her how proud of her I was, because she LEGITIMATELY finished that fucking 13.1 mile run, on her own, kicking ass the entire way. Her strength and persistence is something that I admire about her and even that is a total understatement. I went back to our room and cried in the shower like a total fucking loser. My husband thought I was crying out of either being proud of myself or pain. I used pain (since my legs were on fucking fire) and regret as my reasons for crying. Sucked it up and went about my day. I haven’t been on the treadmill since we got home but that is going to change.

So while I didn’t “finish” finish I did walk a fuckton while in FL as seen by my fitbit report below

So at least there is that. Word to the wise people. Don’t cheat. Totally not worth the feelings of loserdom, just admit that you’re done and tap out… crossing the finish line without earning it…. not cool. Only 5 people knew what really happened with me, they were the real support, while others congratulated me thinking I had done it… only made me feel shittier.

E