what running a half marathon didn’t teach me

That body I wrote about a couple weeks ago? I’m happy to report, it carried me through my third half marathon, clocking in my second-fastest completion. All the strength training I’ve been doing paid off and I finished strong and didn’t really have many aches or pains afterwards.

I had a blast and learned some things about myself along the way, so I felt inspired to write a little about my relationship with running and how I got to where I am.

Girl, run from this nightmare relationship. Part 1.

It had been four years since my last half marathon. I ran my first in 2021. I had gotten into running during the pandemic in the summer of 2020. Things were going terribly in my marriage and being stuck at home together with no other outlets certainly didn’t help. Things came to an ugly head at the start of that summer and I started going for walks, mostly for my mental health. I needed space to process what was happening.

I’ve been fairly active my whole life, with ups and down along the way, like any human might. Prior to having children, dancing was my main outlet. I taught and I performed and I loved it. I basically ate what I wanted (shout out to my metabolism in my twenties!) and had a blast putting on my costumes and make up and entertaining audiences. My body was in great shape and I felt so happy and confident.

Fast-forward 4 years and we’re in this lockdown. I had essentially lost all the baby weight I put on through two pregnancies, but I still didn’t quite feel like myself. I had moved to California, away from my friends and dance sisters in Houston, to be closer to my then-husband’s family. Isolated from my community and with a super demanding job on my plate and two small children under 4 at home, I simply wasn’t focusing on myself anymore.

These long walks shifted something in me and I remembered that moving made me feel good. I downloaded a few fitness apps to do some workouts at home and somehow stumbled upon a beginners’ running program. I had run a 5k fun run with a colleague during grad school, but promptly gave up on running when I saw the race pics (that’s what my thighs look like when I run? No thanks.). I started out slow with a walk/run program, and built my way up to running a full 30 minutes without stopping.

First summer running.

Shout out to my unsafe over-the-ear headphones and the cotton “Bock-ee’s” Rice U beer bike t-shirt.

I stuck with these short 2-3 mile runs for about a year when my local run club started hosting in-person training groups again in 2021. My therapist had encouraged me to find some kind of community activity to re-join the living and I signed up for a trail running group without knowing what I was getting into. I started with a 5k trail run goal and absolutely fell in love. I learned about proper running form (still a work in progress), hydration, nutrition, appropriate gear. We ran up and down the hills of Vacaville in the hot hot heat of summer and I loved it. I started forming a new group of friends and challenged myself to do something out of my comfort zone. By the end of the training, folks started talking about the half and full marathon training group starting up for the fall. I didn’t think there was any way I could run a half marathon; at that point, I think my longest run was about 4 miles. But I was loving it so much, I took a chance and joined.

In the half marathon group, I met some folks who ended up becoming so near and dear to me. We spent so many hours on Saturday morning building mileage and talking with each other. Training was consistent, I felt constant gains. My body was getting stronger and I was running faster. At the same time though, my marriage was coming closer and closer to the end. And for the first time since moving to California 3 years prior, I had real friends I could talk to about it.

Race day came and my ex-husband agreed to stay up in Sacramento the night before with the kids and bring them to watch me cross the finish line. I shared my location, told him what time I expected to cross, and he assured me he’d be there with the kids. The race felt amazing. I was running with friends, enjoying the cool morning air. I felt light and fast and was having an overall blast. I couldn’t wait to cross the finish line and see my happy babies cheering me on. You could probably guess by how I’m setting this up that my family was no where to be found. I won’t go into more detail, but what an absolute disappointment. Within 60 days of that moment, he asked for a divorce and the separation began. I continued running.

Right after finishing my first half. October 2021.

tbh even the disappointment of not having my family cheering me on to cross the finish line couldn’t dull my runner’s high after this one.

Run, Annie, run!

The next year when the same fall training program came around, I signed up without hesitation. But very soon in, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to run every Saturday—I no longer had a partner to share childcare duties with.

Now, I’ll give credit where credit is due. My ex-husband did stay home with the kids every Thursday night and Saturday morning so I could do my training runs. Being able to consistently train was so helpful in achieving my goals. This training season was just another reminder of how difficult single parenting/co-parenting was really going to be.

So I continued on. I did my long runs every other weekend and did my best to maintain mileage during the week. Then 3 weeks before the race, I got Covid again. I initially decided to skip the race, but after some encouragement from friends, I went ahead with it. I didn’t feel 100% and made some foolish food choices the day before the race (not quite as bad as Michael Scott’s infamous carbo-loading, but close) and girl did I bonk! Last four miles were the worst. And I wouldn’t run another half for another four years.

October 2022. I may have bonked…

But these ladies supported me through some really sad conversations over many hours of long runs. Oh, to have a community of friends again!

What’s a story without a setback?

I just kinda figured at that point that I couldn’t really continue running long distances with my new schedule. A few months later, I started dealing with some knee pain, then some other internal pains, which ended up being two HUGE ovarian cysts. I stopped running out of fear they might burst and ended up feeling more and more terrible and gaining more and more weight. I continued doing more gentle exercise, but I really felt terrible mentally and physically.

I was finally able to have surgery in early 2025. I decided that I was sick of feeling terrible and committed to a calorie deficit and got myself a personal trainer. Although I was focusing on strength training and fat loss, I told my trainer that I was a runner in the past and wanted to get back into it. He worked with me on exercises to strengthen the right muscles for running while also helping me towards my goal of being able to do a pull-up (which I still can’t do, but I’m making progress!!). Within 6 months, I had lost all the weight I put on since the first half marathon and started to feel like myself again.

But even after all that, I wasn’t really thinking about running. I actually started dating instead and it was a new boyfriend who encouraged me to run the Oakland Half Marathon with him. By early January this year, I had only done a few 2-3 mile runs every couple weeks, but I dove in.

This time, I still had the every-other-weekend childcare situation, so while I joined a training group, I set my own schedule and tried to bake in my long runs during times I could actually do them. I didn’t do a long run every weekend and I’m not even sure what my weekly mileage was. But guess what. I freaking did it! And this time was faster than the last! I had made a fresh playlist set between 155-165 bpm and I was bopping for the full 2 hours and 40 minutes it took me to finish. My body felt strong, I smiled for the nearly the entire race. I crossed the finish line like a gazelle and I loved it! 13.1 miles!! Again!!

Honk if you’re listening to of Montreal!

Just me bopping along to my quirky playlist, running through the streets of Oakland having a blast!

GRFTNR. Part 2.

The ironic piece about all this is the now-ex-boyfriend who encouraged me to run this race with him. Shortly after I snapped that bikini picture I wrote about and felt so confident and beautiful, my new boyfriend admitted that he simply wasn’t attracted to me. Well, not me per se, but my body type. I tried to hear him with understanding and an open mind. We were doing an 8-mile long run one Saturday, and I tried to understand when he told me, “you are objectively an attractive woman” but then he 1. asked me to try losing a couple (literally two) pounds (to which, I responded ‘no’ and that my body wasn’t up for debate or correction) and a week later he 2. asked me if I’d ever considered a GLP-1. I guess I knew at that point it was over, but I let it linger like a fool for another month until I finally called it for what it was — a dealbreaker.

So I called it. The night before the half, I officially ended things. I’ve worked too hard and love myself too much to settle for conditional love. We still ran “together”, but I listened to my playlist and sprinted ahead of him at the finish line so he wouldn’t be in my finisher picture.

Crossing the finish line, March 2026.

And this time, I’m actually quite pleased with how my thighs look when I run. Dang, girl. Those are some strong legs!! Don’t look back!

I’ll admit. It hurts to feel like you can do everything right and still not get what you want. I thought this guy was a great catch. We were very well aligned in a lot of ways — emotionally, intellectually, parenting styles. I kinda hate to admit that I was very attracted to him physically too. But what a punch to the (pretty-well-defined) gut to have spent so long working on my body to become stronger and healthier only for it to not be enough in the eyes of some fucking dude. But as Captain Jean-Luc Picard famously quipped, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” No user error committed here — not in how I’ve been caring for my body at least.

And so I shall continue on. Both dating as a single mother/co-parent and running. I ran a fun run with my local run group this weekend and before I knew it, they were convincing me to sign up for the 30k trail running group this spring. So there it is — onto the next adventure!