Well, I Survived

It took a week of recovery to build up to this blog post (or perhaps it's just laziness), but I can proudly tell you I completed the 2010 Marine Corps Marathon!!!!

It did not go as planned, but that's sort of the story of my life, right? I started out the morning meeting my brother and his friend and we took the Metro to the starting line. And by "starting line", I really mean "2 miles from the starting line". Apparently when 35,000 people are running a race, they want to spread you out by making you walk really far BEFORE running 26.2 miles. So we got off at the Pentagon Metro stop, as directed, then walked. And walked. All three of us were shooting for a 4:30ish time (4:28 is my PR, so I was REALLY wanting a 4:27 or faster). But I felt like we were running way too fast in those first 3 miles -- which happened to be very much uphill. By mile 7, I waved those guys on ahead and slowed down, but the damage was done. I hadn't run my own race, and now I was fried early on. I was taking walk breaks by mile 10 (I KNOW I can run 16 miles without walking, so what the heck was I doing!?). The story of my race was "mind over matter". I just could not help but take walking breaks, even though I was feeling pretty strong.
That said, I had a blast. I truly enjoyed it all -- all 5:27 (that's right, an hour past my goal) of it. It was a beautiful course, tons of great crowd support and so many Marines in uniform. :)
I am already thinking about the 2011 Chicago Marathon. Then maybe I'll retire my marathon shoes.

Here are a couple of pics from the day.

These are three of my wonderful friends (and sorority sisters!), Linda, Sonja and Kristen. They were out on the course all day. I was so thankful to have them!


This is at the finish line, I'm rocking my Compassion Over Killing t-shirt. I am SO happy I raised over my $2,620 goal with my marathon training.



This is from the professional photogs' site. So it;s only a proof - but I'm pretty sure I'll order this. Not many marathons that finish at such an incredible spot!


I'm really just so glad it's over. With my injury and SO MUCH time devoted to training this summer, I was just really ready to have this over with. I probably made myself more anxious than need-be, but it's been a few years since I've attempted the big 26.2!