Less than 24 hours to race day..

So, tomorrow is the big day: The Baltimore Running Festival Half Marathon 2012.  Am I ready?? Dunno?  Lately I've felt like I'm in the middle of a battle.  A battle with myself, a battle of the bulge, a battle for time..  I don't feel like I'm winning.  So, that makes the impending race feel all the more difficult.  I'm not sure I'm ready.  Friends have said they have faith in me, and I can do it.  I appreciate the confidence, I really do.. I just wonder where my OWN confidence is?  I can't seem to find it anywhere..

I'm not at all looking forward to getting up at 4am tomorrow.  I'm also not looking forward to 2+ hours standing around in the cold, waiting for the race to start, and having to pee every 10 minutes from the nervousness coursing through my body.  I'm hoping I can keep a good, slow pace, but still make my 3hr 5min goal finishing time.  I have to remember to not start too fast, but also keep up a reasonable pace.  Then I have to remind myself that I'm really not doing this to make a specific time, I just want to finish.  

Long-distance running really is one great big mind-fuck.  Most people are not made to run long distances.  But we (some of us) do it anyway.  There's something to be said for pushing the limit, doing more than we ever imagined we could, beating our own previous best time, and even feeling the aches and pains that go with embarking on crazy endeavors like that.  When I finish I feel such an enormous sense of accomplishment that I can't even describe.  Even on training runs, I think "I did it!"  At the end of my first half marathon, I expected to cry.  I didn't.  I felt so out of it and tired that I couldn't even think.  At the finish of my fastest 5k ever, though, I did cry.  Having been the fat kid who couldn't do any kind of physical exercise well, I'd accomplished something I never even dreamed of.  

I'm hoping that I feel that way tomorrow, at the finish line.  That no matter how slow I ran, or how tired I am, I feel the emotion of the accomplishment.  Really, that's why I do it.  Just for that one minute of pride I feel afterwards.  It's worth all the blisters and leg cramps in the world, just to say "I did it."