A Race to Remember

With everything that happened last week, everyone kept asking me, "are you still going to do your race?" Although it was the last thing emotionally I wanted to try to push myself to do, I knew I had worked way too hard to give up now, and had even more of a reason to run it! For Kyle. I knew whatever he was going to have to endure, I could endure 26.2 miles. OUR marathon begin last Thursday and the end will be in sight before you know it! There will be times when it will be tough, there will be mental struggles, physical pain, emotional highs and lows, but there will never be a finish line quite like it!

Sunday morning I woke up with zero appetite. Saturday I forced in a lot of food (pancakes, oatmeal, bananas, and any carb I could find) and went to sleep early(ish) hoping to get some rest. Sunday morning came and my mom dropped me off at the Boutwell center. I found Stephanie, the music was pumping us up, and I was starting to feel like "I can do this!!!" Before you knew it we were on our way. The weather was freezing, but i have to admit, I dressed perfectly! Was never too hot, or too cold. The sun came out and felt amazing! I even had a little tan line on my forehead from my ear warmer. What was even more weird though, was that the water and powerade was freezing on the ground when people would throw their cups down at the water stops. They were telling us to watch out for the ice! Crazy! After all the warm days we've been having. It would drop that weekend. Just my luck. ha

Mile 1-13 was great. Took it nice and slow. Actually mile 1 ended up being my slowest mile (9:08). I took the advice of "not starting out too fast" seriously I guess. Mom and Brandon took me by surprise at how often they were there cheering me on! It meant so much to see them every 4-5 miles. It was great! By mile 13 I was maintaining a steady slow pace (averaging 8:40-8:56) and knew if I was going to get sub 4 , it was time to kick it up a little. I felt completely confident that the second loop around I could push harder because I was no where near hitting the wall. Talk about a great feeling!

Mile 13-26 was just AWESOME. After splitting off from the half marathoners, the crowd got significantly smaller, but it was such a cool feeling looking around at everyone and thinking "we're all gonna do this!" That is when it hit that I was running a marathon. I was doing it.

Mile 14 the sun was out, I was feeling great, and the nicest man started running/talking/distracting me asking me all about my goals, races, etc. I told him I wanted to run a sub-4 and he said he was doing that too. From then on I was hoping to stick with him (competitive much?) bc I knew he would push me. I ran much faster and was averaging between 8:30-8:40 pace until mile 21.

Mile 21-26 deserves its own post... so for now, here are some favorite pictures of the day!