My Little Half-Marathoner
- Brenda Tollefson
- Oct 25, 2015
- 5 min read
If you ever needed inspiration to get out and tackle your life goals this post is just for you. If you’ve been reading my blog you probably already know that my son and I have been training all summer for his first half marathon. Today I want to share how it all started and how far we’ve come.
How it all began
I’ve always been a pretty active person, but between college classes, raising my son, and the birth of my daughter, my workouts became pretty minimal. My cardio was primarily on the elliptical so that I could watch videos for class and keep an eye on my son while I worked out. After my daughter was born though, I started working extra hard to get back into shape. I decided that I was going to finally tackle my goal of running a marathon. I have friends who run them all the time and I know this is no small feat, so I started out slow. In fact, when I first started I could barely run to the end of the block. Not because I was out of shape, but because I have asthma. I usually just let it run its course and over time build up resistance rather than relying on an inhaler. Every time we move to a new base I have asthma attacks until my body gets used to the new environment, so I knew it’d be a longer road for me than for most.
Our first race
When my husband started training for his annual physical evaluation we had to take turns running. One of us would get back from a run and the other one would head out. One day my son, who was only 6 at the time, asked if he could go for a run with us. We both kind of laughed, but thought we’d indulge his ambition anyway. We took him for a run around our neighborhood and told him to let us know if he got too tired so we could stop. He ran close to a mile that night and continued to run with us. Running went from being this annoying rotation of “who’s going first” to a family affair. We made it up to 3 miles by the end of the summer and I signed both of us up for a color run.
That was last summer. This summer I had planned on running a half marathon by myself. When I started to train for it however, my son immediately jumped in ready to run. He asked me if he could run a marathon with me that year. I told him that if he could run 3 miles with me on our first run I would sign him up for a half-marathon. I tore a tendon in my ankle a couple weeks after our color run the year before and I was barely cleared to start running again. I knew a marathon was out of the question, but I figured I could stick it out for 13.1 miles. He ran the whole 3 miles with me that night. The wheels were in motion and we started our training. We got up at 4am to train before it got too hot. We live in Oklahoma, so 4am is still 80° in the summertime. Some days went a lot smoother than others, but we made good progress.
The day of the race
Finally we were off to Minnesota for our race. We spent the week vacationing, and at the end of the week was our half-marathon. With my terrible navigational skills and my mom underestimating how long it would take us to get there, we arrived just as the gun went off to start the race. We quickly threw on our number bibs and shoe lace trackers and hit the trail. Having never run an actual half-marathon before (I’ve run that far, just not in a sanctioned run) I figured the color of our bib would match the color of the arrows we should follow. I was wrong! We ended up running the kids 1 mile fun run before we got on the right path. Oops. Then, only a couple miles in, I had a severe asthma attack. I think the stress of being late and going the wrong direction at the start, combined with fall allergies and physical exertion was just too much for me to handle. I never fully recovered and ended up walking the majority of the race. We did manage to maintain a 14 - 16 minute mile the whole time, which I know is a really slow pace, but if you’ve ever had an asthma attack and no inhaler on hand you’d know that’s not bad at all.
As I mentioned before, I’ve never run a sanctioned half-marathon before, so I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t realize that parts of the trail were a bike trail. Other parts of the trail were really rugged. There was one part that was so steep the trail zigzagged up the hill. If it didn’t you’d never make it to the top. Another part of the trail had a rope to hold onto so you didn’t slip on the steep muddy hill as you went down. It was still pretty difficult to get to the bottom of the hill though. The last few miles were pretty rough. We were both exhausted and dehydrated. The trail was a rough one, but we had our eyes on the prize and we were almost done. We were late to get started and got lost at the beginning so there really weren’t a lot of other people as far back as us. We did manage to catch up with some of the slower runners though, which I thought was pretty awesome.
That’s when something phenomenal happened. We rounded the corner from the dense woods to an open street where one of the race volunteers met up with us. Then another person and another one. Word had spread that my little 7 year old was about to finish the Surly Loppet half-marathon and a few of the volunteers and our family wanted to cheer him on for the last couple miles. We started out with just the 2 of us, but crossed the finish line as a group of 7. Apparently the youngest person to finish that half-marathon in the past was 12 years old. That’s a pretty substantial age difference if you ask me (5 years). I was beyond proud of my son, but the people who walked those last 2 miles with us really warmed my heart.
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