One habit I picked up in Sin City

I travelled to Las Vegas this July to celebrate a friend's bachelorette party. In August I signed up for the Rock 'n' Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon with Team Challenge. And right now, as I write this post, I feel at a loss for words. Or rather, there are so many words I pretty much don't know where to start. This weekend I realized how truly life changing the whole process of training has been.

I attribute most of my emotional surplus to Team Challenge. I've been somewhat hesitant to write too much about Team Challenge throughout training because I didn't want my 2 - 3 readers to think the purpose of my blog was to solicit donations. Now that fundraising is behind me I feel like I'm on safe ground. So be on the lookout for a Team Challenge recap.

This weekend also served as one big, colossal milestone for me personally. Last week Kelsea described me as a "yo-yo runner," and I think she pretty much hit the nail on the head. Since a mere pre-teen I have picked up and put down running about a millon and a half dozen times. And I've never held onto it long enough to make any significant progress. This is probably the reason I never have and still can't seem to call myself a runner.

But as I look back on the last six months, I can't help but feel proud of how far I've come. I was running one mile a day in July when I last visited Las Vegas. I remember saying to one of my marathoner girlfriends, "I wonder if they have any marathons or half marathons on the strip. That'd be pretty cool." And now here I am having finished one.

I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment when I started running under an 11:00 min/mile pace and under a 10:00 min/mile pace. I was thrilled to beat my 5K PR, and floored when I ran a 10K with an average pace under 9:00 min/mile. I couldn't believe how good I felt after cutting 10 minutes off my half marathon time in Malibu, and started to believe I might not be an athletic retard when I beat my 5K PR again. By more than 4 minutes.

And then there was Las Vegas. I called my mom this morning to tell her how the half marathon went. I'm going to go ahead and spoil the end of my (will be posted soon) race recap by summarizing our conversation.

Mom: And how long did it take you?
Me: 1:56:48
Mom: Oh good! I know you wanted to finish in less than 2 minutes.
Me (chuckling): I'm not quite that fast.
Mom: Well, what does 1:56 mean then? Does that mean 1 hour and 56...?
Me: Mom. Do you really think it's possible to run 13 miles in 2 minutes?

We both had a good laugh over that. My mom and her orders of magnitude...

But all of that falls in the shadow of the death grip I have on running. This race marked a turning point. I don't plan on quitting this time around.