Marathon #10 is in the books.... even if I wondered if it would happen or not.
Work has just been crazy lately. Seems most days we are here very late and some on the weekends. It's hard to get your training in when that happens. My husband even said to me... "I don't know why you signed up for that full ironman when you already come home exhausted everyday." I tried to explain to him that I come home mentally exhausted not physically. He doesn't get it. He has very little stress at his job. He's not keying numbers at a computer all day and staring at the numbers all day long trying to be a magician and predict the future. LOL I told him that some days I seriously think I'd rather just be a Walmart greeter and not have to think. :<>) And this is the one thing that concerns me about getting in my training for ironman.... Just praying work won't be rough come June, July & August! That's when I'll really be in the heat of my training.
This is how I feel most days here lately.. OUT OF ORDER!
Oh that's enough of me complaining about work. I do love my job most days.. just not here lately. Let's get on to the race report.
So I had not done a FULL marathon since Disney back in January, 2017... it's been a full year. That dang bursitis really got me down last year along with a few other things... so I had a good long break from doing any full marathons. I was nervous. My running still isn't back up to par. I'm basically doing a run/walk program for my long distance running and have felt good doing it.
Notice the R4TK... Run4TheKids... I love to represent the kids!
A couple of my running friends were also doing the full and had asked me to run with them. It tends to make 26.2 miles go faster if you have a running partner. :>) I had told them I would try, but planned to do my 5 minute run followed by 1 min walk. Michelle said that was going to be too much walking for her and she didn't think her knees could take it.
So at the last minute I went against my plan and told her I'd try to just run with them and I hoped the water stops were going to be every mile so we could walk them. Well, the water stations were more like every 2 miles.
Waiting to start.. the wind was chilly.
Basically I surprised myself because I was able to run. We did walk each water stop and even stopped to go to the bathroom one time. Now keep in mind we were not going fast. Matter of fact when we would get to doing a 9:30 or so pace, Jamie would slow us back down to a 10:30 - 10:45. We all knew we did not need to run too fast especially in the beginning because none of us 3 have been training hard lately. By mile 17 my whole body hurt. My toes were on FIRE! Even though I had rubbed most of my body down with vaseline, I was starting to rub raw in several places. It was so HOT! My whole face was covered in salt. AND to top it off they had changed the course since I last ran it. We were now approaching a huge bridge that was a monster HILL! We noticed that runners were also coming back over the bridge which meant we were going to have to do that bridge 2X... grrrrr... Little did I know there would be 2 more bridges that were hills before we turned around to come back in to the finish.
Now don't get me wrong. I prefer a race with hills because there is a DOWNHILL side..... but since my longest run was 14 miles with 4 miles walking to get a total of 18 miles .... I was not ready for hills at the end of a marathon. We decided to walk up and run down them.
It was about mile 20-22 that we got to talking about our time. Michelle realized that if she didn't walk much the last miles she could make a PR. Even though me and her were both running our 10th marathon, she said she had never ran one under 5 hours. I told her I had and there was no way I could make something better than a 4:30 to get me a PR so we encouraged her to run on. She did and she got that PR! And by shock with my walking I was able to pull out a 5:01 .... here's my watch time for proof :>)
Talk about being shocked after not running for several months. I guess it was good to take a break. Now 5 hours still ain't fast.... that's just a 11:30 pace ... but that's also for 26.2 miles. :>) I was happy with my time.
We all finished with minutes of each other which was even sweeter. We grabbed a few pictures before heading back to our hotels.
I love these peeps! They are all so very inspiring and encouraging. I'm glad I'll be with several of them in Hawaii to conquer the Kona Marathon in June. :>)
BTW... I was sore as heck! That's the downside from not running much. It kind of felt like my first marathon all over again. Today is day 4 post marathon and my quads are still very sore tight. I'm glad my coach gave me an easy week of workouts to recover. However, she's got a swim program tomorrow that I'm going to have to google to understand what I'm supposed to do. ha! I've never had real swim training so this is going to be interesting. :>) Looking forward to the challenge. Change is good. :>)
Happy running peeps!
Grab you some friends and get out there!
D
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