Monday, October 26, 2009

The Marathons Of Life

My medal - finisher!


About ten months ago I was blogging about my resolutions for 2009 and decided that one of them should be to run that infamous 26.2 miles known as a marathon. I don't know what possessed me make that a goal, except that I'd run in several 10 mile races and figured that 26.2 wouldn't be unachievable if I trained for it.

The Last Well group from church who handed out water - Scott is far left
Yesterday was the day of the race - the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC. There were close to 30,000 runners, so I wasn't alone in my madness. My sweet boyfriend, Scott, came to hand out water and run with me at the end. I started out the race thinking, OK, this isn't so bad, as long as I run slow enough, I should be able to make it!

WRONG... At mile 2, my right knee started hurting. And I don't mean, 'Oh, this is uncomfortable' kind of pain, I mean, 'Why are there knives stabbing the back of my knee cap?!' kind of pain. Thankfully, Scott was at mile 4 handing out water and I had thought ahead to give him a bag of Advil so I stopped and took four of those. That helped for about a mile and then the pain came back.


So tired and sore - mile 25

As if that wasn't enough, at mile 8 both of my hips started hurting. Again, this was legit, OMG pain that would normally stop me in my tracks. I really thought I could pull through it so I kept on going. At mile 14 the pain of all my joints overtook me and I stopped and told a marine that I needed the medics to look at me. As I was jogging to the medical tent, I was thinking about how long I've trained for this race and that I never want to run it again and if I had to crawl across the finish line, I wanted too just so I could have it in the rear view mirror of life. So I kept jogging past the medical tent and thinking that I just needed to make it to mile 20, where Scott would be waiting to cross the bridge with me to the finish line.



I loved my shirt! Finish line under the arch

Scott was there and ran with me to mile 22, where the pain was overwhelming to the point where I had to walk. Walking itself was so painful, but I wanted to at least jog across the finish line at the end so Scott took my hand and walked with me the rest of the way. He had my camera and was able to get a few shots at the end. I completed the race in about 5 hours and 30 minutes. I wanted to do it in under five hours but with all the walking I had to do because of my joints, I'm pretty satisfied with my time.

Scott and me at mile 23

I came home and took some prescription pain killers, which took the edge off the pain of my aching joints. My victory meal? A tavern in Seven Corners called Dogfish Head. I had amazing buffalo chicken dip and macaroni and cheese.

I slept like the dead last night, I don't think I've ever been so tired. If any of you out there are thinking about running a marathon, DON'T. Well, I guess it's a worthy goal, and I think I'll be more happy about doing it when I'm healed. If you want to run a marathon, make sure you train outside, stick to your training schedule, and listen to your body. Most people aren't designed to run that far. If I had been more diligent about training my joints for hours and hours of running, I probably could have performed a lot better yesterday.

Collapsing after the race

Cheers to another resolution completed and to never running that far ever ever again!

Monday, October 19, 2009

Um.. I'm still a blogger, I promise!

It's been a long time. This is why I've been MIA:


His name is Scott and he is amazing. More to come :-)