My fourth half-marathon began much like my third — inauspiciously. I was forcing myself to eat after a terrible night of sleep (NOLA neighbors decide to rage from 3:30-5AM? awesome), dry-heaving nervous at the prospect of towing the line again. It felt like an effort to just point my feet in the correct direction. Was I really going to do this again???
In one of those races, I effectively quit at Mile 6 and spent the next 7.1 miles hating myself and everything. In the other, I forged ahead, hit mile 10 with a smile and the finish line proud.
It would be simplistic to say the difference was that I just decidedNew Orleans wasn’t going to be like the last time (Philadelphia), and then I went out and made sure that it wasn’t. So let’s just say I learned a lesson about mental strength and the importance of determination, in the good, real-smile-in-the-postrace-pictures way.
