Our resident runner, Jennifer Tran, was all set to run the LA Marathon last weekend. She ran during lunch, after work, on holiday weekends and seemed to rarely sleep. All along the way, she wrote about her experiences for Kspace, and shared what she was reading about and experiencing. Unfortunately, when it came time for the Marathon, life happened. She had other commitments that meant a lot to her, and the timing sucked. This is how she explains it:

Still only a few days post the LA Marathon and all I see are blog posts, local news articles and tweets about how this person or that person either PR’d or practically died in the streets I like to call home. For me, it was definitely not my race, and by not my race, I mean I didn’t even have the chance to step to the starting line.

I’ve been replaying the weekend and the week prior to the race over and over in my head, trying to figure out if I’m disappointed in myself, if I feel good about the decision or if I even care at all (I at least got my Roadrunner’s training shirt and a crapload of miles and training out of it). There were also three JT sitings from people on twitter who allegedly saw me run by them… not sure how that happened.

The short and skinny of it is: I’m the Maid of Honor for my cousin Pamela who is practically like a sister to me. She and her fiancé were actually the only ones who went and cheered for me at my first half marathon and at the LA Marathon last year (they had no idea they’d be hanging out for about six hours in Downtown LA but cheered and took pictures as I limped towards them at the finish line). With the wedding coming up in a few weeks I started thinking about my recovery time… this was only my second marathon and I really didn’t know what to expect. All I knew is that it wasn’t till my 8th half marathon (Surf City this year) that I bounced back in no time.

I could tell that she (my cousin) was also worried about me not being able to walk for a few days or limp around for a week or two (last year I suffered a really bad injury and was in a brace for a month). She also had a severe bridal emergency, buckle down break down the marathon weekend so I had to cancel my tweetups and hanging out with some of my favorite running friends.

But, as important as doing this race was to me, I realized that it was just self-importance and that I really had to take the spotlight down for a second because the race will be there next year but she’s only getting married once (I hope).

The whole decision and experience also made me wonder about how supportive people were in other runner’s lives with things like races. I don’t usually expect people to come and cheer for me at a race (let’s be honest, it’s not the most exciting thing in the world unless you’re into running or like to see people suffer), but when they do without suggestion or if someone acknowledges some aspect of my running it really means a lot.

But running isn’t everything.

Oh my god, YES, I did just say that… and I don’t mean it in the sense to make light of the matter for myself, because at the end of the day, I’m the one who didn’t get to run, and people won’t give it a second thought. Now with whittled down races to only significant ones (Ragnar + San Diego RnR + Malibu next) I kind of think of races like I think of going out clubbing with friends – you get dressed in your best outfit people take pictures of you that are later posted on huge event sites, etc. But, you can’t do it all the time. This doesn’t mean that you should stop dancing. My favorite part of doing races is all the training that goes into them.

I’m still running (actually I’ve been running a LOT this week). I’m training for my Ragnar Relay (April 23 – 24th) and am shooting for a 100 miles before the end of the second week in April. Right now I’m working out the racing/running/life balance – that’s still a huge conundrum to me. When you start something off (especially the new breed marathoners) like running it’s hard to not let it overtake your life. So that’s were I’m at.

Consider this my non-race race report. My battle with the LA Marathon continues – till next year!

Oh yeah – and I’m in stealth training mode till the wedding is over but in Ragnar Relay full swing. (Spoiler Alert: My Team’s costume theme is “Escape From Burning Man” and my first Ragnar leg will be starting at 2am. Can you say EPIC?!) Stay tuned.