Most Painful Race

I have 2 painful races.  They were painful for completely different reasons.

 

My first painful race was my very first half marathon.  It was the San Antonio Rock’n’Roll in November 2013.  In September, a friend/co-worker of mine attempted suicide and I didn’t know how to deal with it and ended up dealing with it poorly.  I turned to food big time and ate my emotions like there was no tomorrow.  I also ran a LOT.  Like, in the previous months I was running right at 100 miles a month.  In September 2013, I ran just shy of 150 miles.  About a week into October the lid fell off the can and I just quit.  I kept eating like I was, but I just stopped running or doing any sort of working out.  So, from the first week of October until the race happened over a month later, I basically didn’t run at all.  I then went and ran a half marathon.  It was horrible.  Toward the end, I was “running” and a lady speed walking passed me. 

 

I couldn’t walk right for over 3 days.  I hurt so bad.

 

My second painful race was the Alamo Half this year.  It was painful because I got sick the night before.  I started getting sick around 8:30 the night before.  Then I went to bed and couldn’t sleep more than 30-45 minutes without getting up and running to the bathroom to avoid disaster.  At first, I couldn’t get the room to be cool enough.  Then, at one point I know I had a fever because I got super chilled and achy like you get when you have a fever.  When I woke up the morning of the race, I felt beyond miserable.  I had to rush to the port-a-potty during the race twice to avoid more disaster.  Since I hadn’t really slept the night before, I was super tired and the race was rapidly draining what little energy I had left in me.  On my 1.5 hour drive home, I had to stop at one point and walk around because I was literally falling asleep while driving.  I got home and went straight to bed and slept for 6 hours.

 

I’d say my track record of running for over 2.5 years and only having 2 painful/crappy races is a pretty good one.  I know I will have more painful/crappy runs in the future, but I’m not worried about it at all.  98% of the time, running is awesome and fabulous.  I can take that 2% of the time where it’s not and move on with my running life and not get discouraged.

What was your most painful race?