First of all, I want to totally commend you for getting into running with Crohn's. That's amazing and you should be really proud of yourself and what you've accomplished thus far.

I have Fibromylagia and can completely sympathize with the chronic fatigue. I'm on a medicine (Nuvigil) just to keep me awake and alert because my body is so "spasmatic" at night, I rarely sleep a full 6-8 hours. I get gut issues from a butrans patch my rheuma put me on to help with the pain. So far, not helping. I find that the running and yoga and zumba help me a lot more.

Three years ago when I started my diagnosis with a rheuma, I was told I was heavy and needed to lose weight. I had run a 5K the May before seeing him in something like 44 minutes. I thought that was pretty awesome. I hadn't really been training and knew if I wanted to run I needed to get more serious about it. I got fitted for good running shoes and started C25K while doing zumba religiously. I had dropped 40 lbs and had run another 5K. By December, I was feeling really good and signed up for the Broad Street 10 miler. Yep, jumped right over the 10K and went right to the 10-miler. Why not!? A challenge is healthy and that meant I would have to keep to some kind of training plan. In February, I started to get sick. REALLY sick and by March I was in the hospital. Turns out, when you eat healthy, organs like your gall bladder fail on you. I had to have emergency surgery and spent 3 weeks in the hospital. My surgeon said absolutely not to the 10-miler.. obviously, he didn't know me. Once I was cleared to run in early April, I got those shoes back on and tackled 2 miles. Painful. 3 miles. Really painful. Then it became easier to tolerate and by May 3rd, I was running that Broad Street. Not fast but finished in 1:57. I figured.. well hell.. 10 miles plus a 5K is a half marathon. I can do this! So I signed up for three -- Rock 'n Roll Philly, Runner's World and Wine and Dine, never realizing until the following year that I had qualified for Half Fanatics. I worked my way up and have run about 15 halfs and 4 fulls. Have a bunch more on the docket for fall. I also changed rheuma's as my first one told me I shouldn't run. He also misdiagnosed me so that was a total bummer.

Distance is really based on the person. Three years ago I didn't ever believe I could run a marathon. Because my mind was telling me no. I met a girl with a Marathon Maniacs headband on and thought "Who runs marathons for fun and brags about it!?" With my fibro, my abilities have decreased and I find it much harder to recover as fast as I did when I was running less mileage. I've switched from running straight through to doing the Galloway intervals. I find that my body recovers faster on the walk break and I'm not hurting myself in the long run. My times may be slower, but that's ok. I'm not Meb or Shalene and that's ok by me. I'm up, I'm off the couch, I'm a Half Fanatic and a Marathon Maniac and I'm proud of myself.

I do think that the Disney races do a good thing by promoting running, but also serve as an injustice to those who do not train for them properly. No matter the distance, you need to train. I can't tell you the number of "Princesses" in February who were getting sick, passing out, truthfully had no business (as they were not trained) being on the course. I overheard one girl in my corral who said "I only made it up to 6 miles and figured 'Hey, what's another 7. I can fake it on course.'" She wound up on the sag wagon and got her medal just for signing up. It's a shame. Those people never really get to experience the high of crossing the line and feeling that moment of "I did it!"

Keep at it and well done!!

Someone called me fat and told me I couldn't do it. That's what made me get pissed and said I'm proving you wrong! Then I did the Goofy and YES I did rub it in their face I did finish! Not the grown up thing to do but damn it felt good to prove them wrong!

Actually, my thought process went like this: "I should train for a race. What distance sounds really hard? Well, I've done a few 5ks (one of which is billed as "The 5k that feels like a 10k"), so a 10k seems pretty reasonable. I couldn't imagine running a half marathon. So I guess I'll train for one of those."

You don't have to think you can do it, you just have to do it (i.e., train for it).

2013 was a rough time for me for several months. I needed a distraction, a focus. I needed to prove to myself that I could do something just for me. Was running 5k's and a few 10k's throughout the year so I thought a half marathon was the answer, something do-able but would be a huge achievement. I simply wanted to end the year with a bang, and I did

I think there's an 'why not' moment for everyone.
I started running (slowly) to get back into shape and help lose about 40 pounds.
Shortly there after I had signed up for Color Me Rad , my finish time was laughable but I finished and it wasn't horrible.
Over the fall/winter a few friends of mine were doing the Broad Street run (2013), so I trained for that.. and finished in 2:19:24

Around when I was training for that a whole bunch of us signed up for tough mudder and rock and roll marathon, I figured I could run 10 miles, what was 3 more ..surprisingly enough I finished in 2:24:05 .. i was honestly going to be happy finishing under three.. after the one I was more or less hooked and finished out the year with a 2:22:17 in October '13.

This year so far I have completed two halfs, the broad street and merrell down and dirty, with two more halfs planned, a spartan sprint, and a decathlon. . next year I'm setting my sights on a triathlon sprint which means i may have to pare down so many HM's ..

But honestly even if you don't train you can complete a half, it just comes down to it what your goals are.

I was sitting in a GI doctor's office, in week 4 of C25K, frustrated b/c I was on hold towards my goal of finishing a 5k. That's all I had really planned...MAYBE I'd move to a 10K. I ran 3 miles around the inside of the school gym one day in high school PE, but that was the extent of my running experience prior to C25K.

And my doctor looked at me and said "You should be running half-marathons, not 5Ks."

That's all it took. Someone to believe in me, to tell me, matter of factly, that I should be doing it.

Before I made it home, I knew I was doing a Half-Ironman. Triathlons were my goal, but I never thought I'd get much beyond an Oly distance b/c of the running. I'm still a very slow runner - my speed in this part of the tri will put me as one of the last in my AG to finish, even though I will be one of the first in my AG out of the water. Give me another year and I'll be much better on the bike. Hopefully I will finally see some improvement in my running times, too.