More #3 Marathon Deets

Race day morning, I woke up at 4am and did everything right.  Everything that relates to fueling and well all that other fun stuff you do before a big race.  The one thing I didn’t do so well was waking my hubs up on time.  What?!  I gave him roughly 20 minutes to get himself together. haha!  Whoops!  I thought he was a big boy and he had set his own alarm.  Then I just lost track of time.  Doesn’t matter.  We still made it there with plenty of time to find a free parking spot, walk six blocks to our corral, stand in a long line for the porta potty, and even then, he still had time to walk all the way back to the care for our sunglasses and chapstick.  We had already started the race and he’s like, “Hey, I grabbed your cherry lip balm too, btw.”  Greatest husband of the year contender right there!

Uh so…I take really crappy awesome pictures right?  Here’s the start line…

and here’s a pirate or two…

  And here’s what we got at the finish.  The end.

Isn’t the shirt cool?  I kind of feel like a distant relative of an Olympian when I wear it! I mean, Kara Goucher and I both have brown hair, right?

Haha!  JK!  I know you wanted to hear a mile by mile break down of the marathon, right?  Hmm, well let me summarize…

• We started out great.  It was a little chilly and my fingers finally started warming up around mile 3.  My nose didn’t stop running until around mile 18.  At the start, it was in the low 50s maybe?  Perfect weather.
• The first half of the marathon, we felt great…stopped to pee twice.  My hubs added on a few seconds to our time because he went around a spot and wouldn’t go through a grassy area that looked muddy.  He didn’t want to get his shoes wet.  Our splits were good, not too fast and feeling great.
• Mile 13 my calves started to cramp a little and it was a long stretch to the next aid station for water.  Mile 15 I stopped to stretch while the hubs pit stopped.  I didn’t have to go….very unlike me.  Up the bridge, but not like last year where I ran the whole thing.  I made it though yet didn’t feel the elation on the other side.  It was warm, my nose was still running like crazy…was I seriously getting a cold on marathon day?!  Magically, it stopped running around mile 19…right about the time my quads started to crazy cramp up and I thought my legs could fall off.
• Then I stopped sweating.  I didn’t realize it at the time but I was suffering from moderate dehydration.  I’m never dehydrated, and yet I chose to run without liquid, like I had done the previous two years. BUT I failed to calculate the 20 degree spike in the temperature.  Normally, I take in a couple of ounces of water each mile, race day….it was down to every 1.5 to two miles and it was too late for me.  I was dumping water on myself now at each station to cool myself down.  The down hills were nice because even though it hurt, it didn’t hurt as much.  In the last 6 miles we passed 141 people (Race stats….no, I wasn’t counting) and only 11 people passed us.
• The last 6 miles were the worst and my confidence in my training wasn’t there.  I knew I hadn’t trained like I wanted to.  I also had the guilt of running with my husband in his first marathon and I was worried he would be disappointed in me and it would affect his race negatively.  At one time, I started to tear up and he barked at me that there was no crying yet.  Later we laughed because a lack of tears is a sign of dehydration…I claimed that’s why I was able to keep it together.  He just wanted to run a marathon with his wife and he didn’t care about the time except that it would be really cool to beat my time from last year. Awwwwww….

A couple of other weird things:

I completely forgot all my running mantras.  I realized it on the course yet it still did me no good. 

I might have broken my iPod too with all the water splashing.  I’m too scared to test it out.  It’s not the battery.  Maybe I just confused it? 

The state of one of my toenails is also in a precarious situation.  It may or may not make it.  I will be sure to keep you informed.

Afterwards, on our trip home, I drank and drank and drank…which thrilled the hubs with all the potty stops.  My appetite didn’t return until about 7 hours later which made my annual Yogurtland tradition kind of a disappointment and also our first trip to 5 Guys a little sad.

I warned you that I wouldn’t stop talking about the marathon for a whole year, so I bet you can’t wait for my next blog!

For you runnerds:

Split	Time
1	11:35.6
2	11:27.0
3	11:37.7
4	10:14.5
5	11:37.0
6	10:48.3
7	11:01.3
8	10:58.8
9	11:26.9
10	11:13.4
11	12:09.3
12	11:35.7
13	11:06.9
14	11:41.5
15	11:59.5
16	15:40.1
17	12:21.2
18	11:55.3
19	14:10.6
20	13:14.4
21	13:15.6
22	12:58.8
23	11:29.2
24	13:34.5
25	12:37.3
26	13:18.6
27	04:50.2
Summary	19:58.9