I RAN MY FIRST MARATHON ON SATURDAY!!!!!! oh my goodness, the feeling of coming across the finish line is so amazing!
last thursday after i got out of work at 7:30 my friend, trisha, picked me up and we went the kibler's house for the night since it's on the way. we definitely only got 6 hrs of sleep...probably not the best 2 nights before a marathon. :) we got up at 6:30 and went for a little run and then went 4wheeling with jake and rachel. (steph had to work). mrs kibler made us an awesome breakfast of bacon and french toast. and then we were on our way north.
i'm terrible at giving directions but if you give me a map i can read it like it's no one's business. thankfully we had a gps so trisha knew where to go :) we got to betsy's house around 11:30 and had lunch with her family. by this time i was starting to get a little bit nervous because it was actually starting to hit me that i was running the next day. after lunch we left for duluth.
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| big manitou falls |
i saw a huge moose with ginormo antlers. when we got to duluth we went and picked up our race packets with our bibs and all the jazz that they give you. while picking up our packets i got a nice 26.2 sticker to put on my car so i can be part of the cool crowd. i also spent way too much on a few ballin headbands. me and trish decided that we needed dinner so we stopped at walmart and got some carbs. pasta salad, sub, pita crackers, and healthy cookies. oh and a banana. we ate dinner at some white trash park and then headed to betsy's brother's inlaws house. on the way there i spied some white water and told trish to stop. we found this amazingly cool waterfall!
race morning:
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| !!! before the race!!! |
4 freakin o clock. thats when we were supposed to get up. i got up at 4:27. then left the house by 4:45. we had to get to the finish of the race to get shuttled up to the start. we took the train which took us about an hour and a half. plenty of time to realize you have to go the bathroom super bad and get really nervous. when we finally got to the start me and trish went and waited for the porta potties. let me tell you, there is nothing like a line of 100 porta potties with 8000+ nervous runners... we didn't cross the starting line until 8 minutes after the clock started because there were so many runners. it was so cool to look down the road and just see a mass of people.
the weather was around 65 and cloudy. we were running right on lake superior so the breeze off the water was cool. it was humid but it wasn't hot so it was pretty near perfect.
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| finished!!! it took a while to get up on that rock. lol. we were so sore! |
for the first 7-8 miles i was keeping my pace right at a 10:45 pace. then at mile 8 my stomach cramped up super bad. it felt like someone was stabbing a knife into my stomach right under my ribs. not cool. so for the next three miles i had to walk for most of it. i finally found that if i ran for 2 minutes and walked for 3 i could keep my pace at a 12:30 mile so thats what i did for the rest of the race. i got serenaded by a man playing a tuba. he ran beside me and played 'you are my sunshine.' hahaha. the last three miles it started raining. crossing the finish line was an amazing feeling of accomplishment.
so some lessons i learned from running a marathon:
1. follow your training schedule no matter how little your motivation is. its gonna pay off.
2. hold your breath while going past the porta potties.
3. run your own race.
4. no matter how overweight or old you are you can still run. you don't have an excuse.
5. mocha flavored energy gel is disgusting.
6. don't think you can camp the night after you run.
7. you will be incredibly sore the next morning. you will walk like someone who has a fake hip and a walker...you'll probably want a walker. :)
8. even though you look like crap you still get hit on by drunk men.
9. hot tubs feel amazing.
10. when you cross the finish and see your time you'll want to do it again to make it better.
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| me and trish with our medals and tshirts :) |
