This Sunday, I was out the door when the sky still looked like this:

Yeah, that’s early.  (It was about 6:00 am.)

Why on earth did I do this to myself?  I did it so that I, along with my friend Barrie, could walk 13 miles in the Mercer Island Half Marathon.   And we did it.  I didn’t even fall this time!

When Barrie first convinced me to do this with her, I was feeling kind of cocky.  I mean, it’s walking, right?  I can walk.  Sure, 13 miles is a long walk, but it’s not like I was going to run it.  THAT would be hard.  As it got closer, I started to panic a little.  13 miles started to seem farther and farther in my head, especially when I set out on long walks by myself on the weekend to “train.”  By the day before, I was starting to freak out and wonder why I ever agreed to do this thing.

Then we went to register the day before, and I came back loaded up with free sports drinks, chocolate milk, Clif bars, chapstick and water bottles that said “Got Polyps?” on it.  I was also pretty excited that the jersey they gave us was way nicer than the normal Men’s XL cotton T-Shirt- it was actual jersey material.  Swag always makes me feel better.  And then we started to walk.

Well, 13 miles is indeed a long walk.  Thankfully, Mercer Island is really pretty and has some pretty gorgeous houses to stare at.  The first few miles went by uneventfully.  We chatted so much that I barely listened to the audiobook I had downloaded just for the walk (The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman was my literature of choice that day).

Then it started to drag a bit.  We were still chatting, though I started to get engrossed in my book, but I was starting to feel like it was going to go on forever.  Whenever I do any kind of excercise, I am constantly doing backwards math (basically comparing how far I’ve gone to how far I have still to go), and I was kind of overwhelmed when after mile 5 I realized that we still had 8 stinking miles to go.  Ugh.

Thank god I had Barrie to keep me distracted.  At mile 7 I was stoked that we were more than halfway done, but my left hip was starting to bother me.  I figured it would go away.  I would come to regret this later.

At mile 8 the elite runners, who started 30 minutes after us, started to pass us.  My heart literally leapt with joy at the mile 11 marker.  2 more miles!  Anybody can walk 2 miles!  We kept going.  My hip was starting to KILL at this point, so we even started running a little because it hurt less than walking (who could have ever predicted that?).  Mile 12 seemed like it went on forever, but then somehow we were suddenly in sight of the finish line.  It was kind of weirdly anticlimactic to walk across a finish line, but we did it.  And Mike was there to awkwardly videotape it:

Awkward, but we still did it.  Even if it was “just walking.”  And then we got fruit:

Total time: 3:15:08.  Next up: Beat the Bridge.