#i made this for myself to cope with these bq feels

[ectoodle]

"This time, no matter where you wish to go, this master will accompany you.”

Thank you everyone for watching my bingqiu amv and all your kind words! 💖

[celestinaruns]

Dealing with Devastation

This weekend I ran my 5th marathon--and my worst marathon.

Yup, you read that right. After running half-marathons and marathons for four years, this was the day I did my worst. No sugarcoating? It’s a shit feeling. It’s heartbreaking. I was sobbing during the race and full-on crying afterwards. When you’re doing something you’re good at, and something like this that requires so much effort, the idea that you will go somewhere ready to give it your all only to end up doing worse than your first attempt is impossible. So when it happens, it’s devastating.

But it does happen. It happens in everything we do at any point in life (which, admittedly, doesn’t actually make me feel any better). Running a 3:54:34 marathon after qualifying for and running the Boston just... well, simply put, it sucks.

You’re probably wondering what happened. Those that know me personally know that I tend to overwork hard. I’m competitive and stubborn. And honestly? I couldn’t even tell you. Around halfway through the marathon, I just got hit with the a horrible wave of nausea. That’s all I really know. I felt a little uneasy and had some stomachaches in the morning--but it was pretty early in the morning, that could have been normal. I didn’t even think twice about it. And I suppose the water stations were awkwardly spaced out and my energy chews didn’t feel good--but there was water.

So I don’t know. All I know was that I felt sick to my stomach, and since I had taken an anti-emetic before the race, I knew I wasn’t going to puke... but that feeling in my stomach made it impossible to run too fast without getting sick, and I gagged every time I even smelled an energy gel. In other words, I ran the last half of my marathon without any gels. My legs felt like lead.

It could have had a cause, or it could have been a fluke that will never happen again--either way, it completely ruined my time and the lack of control really doesn’t help. It’s like if you were to break an arm on the way to a final exam. That’s insane, right? But it happened, and now you can’t write an exam for a class you’ve been working hard in for a whole semester. You just have to take the L and cope somehow.

Admittedly, there were other factors at play, too. I ran Boston five weeks ago. I also had a bad bout of nausea that weekend. There is a very good chance I wasn’t ready to take on a full (the thought “I should have done the half” went through my head about 2 km before the nausea hit). Unknown to me because I know very little about Red Deer, a good chunk of the race was on trail--and I was not prepared. Not to mention headwinds at every damn turn (I was running in loops--talk about acts of God). I have also been in the shittiest of headspaces all week due to a lot of external stress, and marathon running really demands 110% of your mental willpower. Feeling sick to my stomach for half the race was more like the last straw.

So yeah--it’s safe to say that I was heartbroken at the end of this. I felt like I had failed myself somehow. In reality, I just forgot to do the one thing everyone does when they’re trying to succeed: taking it easy. Again, those of you that know me personally know that I don’t do well with taking it easy. Still, the main lesson from this race wasn’t that I suck. It was that I’ve been pushing myself too hard, and because of that I couldn’t run my best. And if I want to continue running my best, I need to take it easy sometimes.

I bring to you...

Things Celestina needs to start doing

1. Not racing her heart out all the daMN TIME. I’m running a 50 km trail race in June with a time limit of 10 hours. It’ll be a lot of jogging and walking on my part. And I’m volunteering as a pace bunny for the Edmonton Marathon at a much slower pace than I would normally do. Hopefully, this will give me the time to focus on running for fun and recuperating for my BQ attempt next year in Edmonton. (Aside: I actually can’t run Boston in 2020 because of school, so 2021 it is).

2. Figuring out new nutrition tactics. Clearly gels and chews hate me, or maybe I need to try a different brand. And I hate running with a belt or a hydration pack, but I do need some kind of plan for races that just don’t have a good spacing of hydration stations. Either way, I need to optimize this so I don’t get sick anymore. And on that note, to consider seeing a nutritionist about what else I could do.

3. Not being her own worst enemy. Ultimately, I ran a sub-4 marathon and I was the 7th out of 34 women. Yeah, it was my worst time. Yeah, that’s a shitty feeling. But it’s still a sub-4 marathon and I got 7th place... just five weeks after running Boston. I know that I exacerbate things a lot of the time by making them seem worse than they actually are, and this isn’t any good for that headspace I was talking about.

A hefty to-do list, to say the least. But running was never meant to be my 5 seconds of fame. It’s something that’s allowed me to stretch my own limits and help out other people that want to do the same. It’s something I want to do for the rest of my life--but that requires hitting a few bumps in the road.

PS -- One way or another, I still got Peter’s. I guess we can call that a win.