Spoiler alert: it was terrible.
I have put off writing this, because it was such a horrible day. But here goes.
Mother’s Day is always hard for me, because I still haven’t recovered from my mother’s death, and since I have been a mother, I have never had a partner who cared about me. So it’s generally a disappointment. Maybe less bad on average since my divorce, but still a hard day.
This day was the worst.
The one thing I asked from my kid was to be at the finish line. They said they would—but they were at their dad’s on Saturday night. We discussed bus routes, Presto cards, etc. etc. They said they’d be there.
I was super emotional all morning, obviously.
I texted my kid from the start line, reminding them of which bus stop to get off, and that I’d check in at the water stations to give them a better idea of timing if I was running early/late.
I texted at the 4km water station.
I texted at the 7km station—there was no reply to my previous texts, so I decided to walk for a bit (save my energy for the final km) and wait for a response. Nothing. I texted their dad. They overslept “but on the way soon.” I was coming up to 8km by then.
There’s an incline up to 8km, so I decided to walk to that point and then resume running. But just knowing my kid had forgotten me on Mother’s Day of all days—after I made an emergency sick-kid school pickup just two days before, and then went back again to collect their bicycle—I just felt so alone. All morning I had been struggling not to cry, off and on. Now I had a full-on panic attack. Tried to remember all of my grounding exercises—box breathing, find something red, something blue, etc.—but I just couldn’t breath. I started making a wheezy/whooping sound on every inhalation, something like stridor, which reminded my of when I had pertussis a number of years ago. I focussed on my diaphragm, and finally got to a normal breathing pattern by 9km.
I ran the last km, obviously no one was waiting for me at the finish line—I was all alone—and again couldn’t breathe. I made it to the medic tent just for a place to sit down, and they checked my blood pressure (125/75) and oxygen (99%) and after sitting for a while I was ready to move again.
Got a drink, got my medal, went to the luggage check, got changed, was on my way to the food area when the kid texted, “almost there.” Arranged to meet at the luggage check (easiest to recognize from a distance, fewest people to get lost in a crowd), and we left without eating.
I didn’t even manage to get any sponsors to donate to the charity (one friend sponsored me later that afternoon) so it was 100% pointless.
Worst run ever. I don’t think I’ll do a 10k again.
