The Big Race

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I have spent all summer training for the big relay race that I do every year. This year I got the 16 mile leg, so I was trying to get in as much distance as I could, as I’ve never run further than a half marathon before.

When I ran the half marathon at the end of July, my foot bugged me. It wasn’t crazy pain, it just didn’t feel right. I kept adjusting my shoe, thinking that somehow me new shoe wasn’t tied right or something. I couldn’t get it figured it, but I finished the race and I was fine. Three weeks before the relay race, I did an 8 mile run with some crazy hills in it and my toe was bugging me again. But this time it didn’t just stop when I stopped running. So I took a week off to see if it could get better. A week later I went to the doctor and discovered that I had multiple stress fractures on my foot. Lovely…

I spent two weeks stressing out about what to do. I bought new running shoes (the new ones that I’d bought before the half marathon were the problem!) that I wore constantly. I quit running entirely. I ordered new orthotics. And I decided to run the race anyway.

My friend Johanna offered to switch legs with me, so she ran the 16 and I only had to run 11. Then I decided to just run and speed walk as far as I could before having someone else take over for me. My goal was 6. I figured that if I could do that, I’d feel good about the race. But I wasn’t going to push my foot at all.

Needless to say, the beginning of the race was pretty stressful for me, just because I literally did not know what my foot could handle and I didn’t want to break myself. But we had fun anyway!







I made it six miles. I mixed speed walking and running until my foot told me that done. Julia took over and ran my last 5 miles for me.


Quitting was hard. But it was definitely what I needed to do. And I made it a while 6 miles!!

The rest of the weekend was stress-free.







And we had a beautiful ferry ride home.



And now I’m done running for like two months until my foot is actually healed.

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