I Ran 10 Miles and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

I feel lame finally getting around to posting this when it happened....oh, three weeks ago. But I ran the Cherry Blossom 10-miler and ROCKED it, baby. My goal was 1:40, and I made it in 1:44.15. No, that wasn't my goal, but one, it was FOUR MINUTES off my goal vs. the 18 minutes I was off when I did the half-marathon, and two, I was strong the whole way through and finished sprinting. Oh, and did I mention it was totally pouring?

It feels cheating to post these two snippets rather than create original thoughts about the experience from scratch, but I'm doing it anyway, because I've been lazy about updating until I got this out of the way. After the race, for about a week, I was just so PUMPED and happy in a way that defies mere words. Then, two things I read summed up my feelings. The first was my post after the half-marathon (May 2007):

"This is, bar none, the thing I am most proud of in my whole life. I have this annoying tendency to always qualify achievements. Anything anybody finds remotely impressive, I always downplay. "Yeah, I got a master's degree from Columbia...but it was just two classes at a time and everybody can get into their master's program." (I do still think that, and it's not just Melinda Doolittle-esque modesty trying to get people to tell me I'm wrong.) "Sorry, I'm busy tomorrow, I'm doing a half-marathon. But don't get too impressed, I'm sure I won't finish!" (And yes, I DID email that to more than one person, again in all seriousness.) But there's no way I can tear down the fact I ran 13 freaking miles, try as I might. It's an incredibly unfamiliar, yet totally awesome feeling. I can't stop smiling."

Then, I was reading Runner's World (I don't even recognize myself anymore, reading sports magazies! Nay, SUBSCRIBING to them!) and came across an article about a guy who ran an ultramarathon (100 miles!):

"My time: 23 hours 48 minutes. At the finish, I vowed I'd never run that far again; a promise that even now, a few years later, I've had little desire to break. But I was suffused with this warm sense of overwhelming fulfillment. In one day, I'd totally rejiggered how I calculated my abilities and weaknesses. What I'm trying to say, maudlin or not, is that I was deeply happy."

And really, I can't say it any better than that.