Hippie Chick 2016: Reflections from a Delicate Flower

by Carissa

I just love my running friends.  I bet I'm not alone in thinking mine are the best.  On Saturday I was able to line up with two of my fabulous buddies for the 2016 Hippie Chick half and quarter marathon.  Earlier in the week I was on a trail run with these same buddies Kelly and Leah when it came up that Kelly refers to me as a delicate flower.  It is a term that both makes me chuckle every time we use it and that I wholeheartedly embrace as an accurate description.  When Leah heard this name for the first time she asked how I had ended up with it.  Neither Kelly nor I remembered specifically but explained it had to do with me knowing my body has certain limitations.   "I actually think of Carissa as pretty tough," Leah contemplated.  However, my race on Saturday proved otherwise.  I am a flower, a delicate flower.

I shared in this post what a fabulous race I had last month.  I was undertrained and my expectations were low and yet everything fell into place at the Vernonia half marathon.  Since then I had leaned into training for two weeks before taking an entire week off running to hike through the beauty that is Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.  It wasn't ideal to skip six days of training but my husband and I hiked 50 plus miles and I convinced myself that had to count for something.  When I got home I had a week to pick up where I had left off in my training and taper for the race.

Hiking in Bryce Canyon National Park

The problem was that when I got home my fatigue showed up.  Monday and Tuesday I was exhausted.  On Wednesday and for the rest of the week I felt better.  I was still tired but not like I had been for the two days prior.  This turn of events gave me some trepidation about Saturday's race but I was determined to show up and run what I could run.

How Fatigue Made Me a Smarter Runner

by Carissa


On Sunday I ran Vernonia Half Marathon, my first race of 2016.  I signed up for the race on Monday of race week. My intention was to use it as a training run for Hippie Chick Half Marathon in May.  I wanted to get some miles in for the weekend and be at the race to cheer on friends running the marathon including my sole sisters Jodi and Tanya.  My good friend Devon was running the half marathon too.  I knew from her the first half of the course would be downhill (fast but tough on the quads) then flat to the finish.

Going into the race I was only three weeks into increasing my mileage base for a half marathon.  Monday I ran my first double digit run since fall.  Feeling ambitious on Wednesday I did a track workout, my first since September.  This is clearly how NOT to train for a half marathon!  I was not ready to race on Sunday which means I showed up laid back with no expectations.  At worst, I would slog through 13.1 miles.  At best, I would run comfortable/hard treating it as a tune up race.

A couple of years ago I was really good at making 13.1 miles miserable.  I would go into a race with an ambitious time goal and run my legs to misery.  I started fast and hoped to hold on.  And guess what?  My second half was always slower than my first and always painful as the wheels fell off maintaining an overly ambitious pace.