Taber Time!: Half marathon and week update

Hi everyone!
So this week was very busy for me, Wednesday (halloween) I came home to a very sick puppy my chihuahua fenix wouldn't hold his eyes open and just wasn't himself. We rushed him to the only vet open past 5 pm on Halloween to find he had a fever. 105 bucks later we had antibiotics and he is now doing much better. Then I really wanted to see my niece and nephew trick or treat and we made it there just in time to see them on their last couple houses. They were adorable and hilarious.
Friday was my nephew James' birthday party so we went to his party and it was super cute and fun. My brother is a chef and made his famous Mac n cheese. It was amazing because I could actually eat it since I needed carbs for the half in the am. I got to meet a lot of fun people and spend time with my family but we headed home early to prep for our morning.

Now for the long part of this post- my first half marathon! I got to the race around 9 am armed with my homemade protein bars and a killer playlist. I had been prepping for it for about 6 weeks as much as I had time for. Usually running 5 days a week for an hour or hour and a half. The race started and I killed it up until mile 6-7 Ish. When I chose this one, the map didn't seem horrible but once we got going it was obvious there were TONS of hills. Another reason I chose this run was because it benefitted kidney disease, which is what my grandfather passed away from earlier this year. I started to feel the pain around mile 7 and that's when my mind started playing with me. I kept talking to my grandfather saying "please help me find the strength to continue this". He would have been so happy for me I just kept picturing what he would have told me during those harder moments. Mile 7-10 I was going pretty slow. I cried like 4 times. Partially because I couldn't believe I was actually going to finish and partially because when my body was at its limit I worried if I could push it past that to the end. I picked up my pace again after that and was able to do those last 3 miles in decent time. Those hills sucked a lot of energy from me. I finally had a breakthrough about how mental running really is, there were points when my body felt like it was going to completely fail but my mind allowed me to carry on. I'm really glad I did it, and feeling pretty badass that I finished it. Now my plan is to continue doing half training until spring and hopefully do a few more. The month of November I have a goal of running a total of 70 miles. I've already got 13 down!
Happy first week of November!

Taber Turner

The hubs and I pre- half marathon