FitOne Blog: DOs and DO NOTs Of Half-Marathoning

I stumbled across a cartoon today that I just had to share with the people taking on the 13.1 mile challenge at FitOne this fall.Given this cartoon from The Oatmeal is about the DOs and DO NOTs of going an entire 26.2 miles, the comic still makes sense for anyone running a half marathon too.  It's a play on all the mistakes we make the first time we take on a long distance race.  While I don't recommend doing 90% of these, there were a few that made me giggle enough to comment on.

DO enjoy massive surges of adrenaline

...and find yourself laughing really hard at things that aren't actually that funny and crying at things that aren't actually that sad.  I'm not sure if the author was actually joking about this one because by you're 3/4 of the way through, you may actually cry when you see people cheering for you or handing you a cup of water at hydration stop.  I've been feeling great an entire a race, but the slightest inspirational thing I see is enough to drive me to tear up with gratitude.

DO NOT despair when thinking about how much farther you have to go

...instead, console yourself by inventing bizarre ways of measuring distances.  I'm not sure this one is a joke either.  In high school we always thought only THIS many laps after this ONE when running the eight lap two mile.  Half-marathoning, I'm constantly counting down miles in intervals like "it's only the distance between the giraffe pen at the zoo and where you normally park at Municipal Park."  Mind over matter people.  Once you get past a 5K, that totally makes a difference in your sanity getting to the finish line.

DO end on a high note

...when you see the finish line, start sprinting like a coked-out orangutan.  No one will ever suspect that you walk-jogged the previous 13 miles.  In my half and full marathons, I've tried this every time.  While I felt like I had that beautiful looking kick I had at the end of my way shorter high school races, I did indeed look like a coked-out orangutan.  You could tell by the look on my face there was no one home and I was pretty spent from whatever happened to me between the start and finish lines, but damnit did it make for some awesome race photos.

The whole comic made me laugh out loud, but it's very last 5 "DOs" for your first long distance race are completely true and why I love this sport so much.  Check out the cartoon and join me for any of the FitOne races on September 20th!