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I cannot believe that it has taken me so long to get this post out to you! Here it goes the race re-cap of the century…my first (or should I say OUR first) marathon!
The day started off pretty chilly…in the low 40’s. We woke up pretty early with our stomachs doing twists and turns. I was so nervous from the moment I fell asleep the night before to the start of the race. I don’t really know why. I didn’t have anything to be nervous about. I did my training, eat my normal breakfast, had plenty of time to glide myself up, and had my husband right by my side. Needless to say, I was a nervous wreck.
We started the race right at 7:00am as the sun was beginning to rise. It was a beautiful morning (besides the wind). There weren’t too many runners…at least compared to Disney. It was a nice easy, fast start and might I add a very fast 10 miles. Once we hit the 10 mile mark I knew that we needed to slow down a bit. It just felt so good but I knew we were going too fast…on target for a 4:00:00 marathon. Everything felt great until mile 14 this is when we turned a corner and all of a sudden we were running into head on wind gust of 15 mph. It was a little wet, chilly, and very windy.
I was starting to feel very pooped and discouraged because we lost a bit of time between miles 14-16 because of the wind. Then all of a sudden when I started to question why I was even doing this in the first place, I look up and in the distance can see people cheering. As we approached mile 17 I notice the cheering fans were my parents. All of a sudden, I couldn’t control my overwhelming emotions and started to cry a little bit…they totally surprised us. Seeing them was just the motivation that I needed to finish strong. So, we crossed the 3rd causeway (which felt like Pike’s Peak) and kept moving along. Both Sonny and I knew that it was important to stay with one another. There were times when he wanted to quit but I kept pushing him along and vice versa. He’s my strength and that day I needed him more than ever to give me his strength and some tough love!
Everything was feeling great we saw my parents again at mile 21 which again gave me another boost. But then we reached the final (4th) causeway…I like to call is Mt. Everest. This was mile 23. For me, I really had to dig deep between miles 23-25. Those babies were absolute torture. Finally, we made it to the final straightaway, where again I couldn’t control my sob fest. I had an extra kick at the end to finish strong and we ended up finished 7 minutes before our goal time (4:20:00) and crossed line at 4:13:01. I couldn’t believe it…we did it!
That S*#T hurt so bad. At first, I was cursing at my stupidity for doing the marathon and proclaimed that it would be a long time before I did another race. It took me about 2 days to recover enough that I could exercise without discomfort and only 4 days to fully recover from the race. Let me tell you, my thoughts have changed completely. I CAN’T WAIT TO DO ANOTHER ONE!!! Unfortunately, I don’t think I will be able to complete one until the fall. BUT I CAN’T WAIT!!!! It was the most painful, exhilarating, emotional and AMAZING days of my life!!
Here are some more pics…
Until next time,
Jenn
Sorry that I’ve been MIA…I came down with a majjor case of the stomach flu and have been in bed for a couple of days. This time I promise I’ll have the race re-cap ready to go very, very soon. 
