Alive to Tell the Tale - At Last!

Yahooo!! We Did it!! We ran a marathon and survived to tell the tale! Might I just say that this has been quite an insane experience, but I am so glad that I did it. Other than hobbling around like a 90 year-old arthritic man, the recovery process has been much quicker than I thought, once Rex gave me the most intense and painful massage ever. What a good, supportive husband. Mark and I both agree that our spouses deserve a medal as well for supporting us this whole time.

So here's my tale of the gruesome 26.2 miles...

At 5am Mark, Roger (Rex's brother), and I loaded the bus that took us up the hill to the starting line. Mark's head is blocking it in this picture, but you can still tell how cool it was. There were flags from lots of nations all around, twinkle lights, bon fires, loud music with a DJ, hot chocolate, thermal blankets, and lots of public urination. I've decided that runners have absolutely no shame.

After waiting for an eternity it seemed, we finally started the race at 6:45. It took us 10 minutes just to get TO the starting line since there were so many people, but it provided ample picture taking opportunities. (We are so amateur runners - as you can tell from our many breaks to take pictures along the way.) I don't know if it was the adrenaline, the company, or the new scenery but the miles just flew by. As Mark kept saying over and over at every mile marker, "Really?? Another mile already? This is just flying by!" Talk about the best running buddy!

Here we are at the halfway point, right before things got incredibly difficult. There were 3 major hills we had to go up with not much downtime in-between for about the next 7 miles. As one poster on the side of the road said, "If the hill's got a name, you know it's gonna be a tough one!"

Speaking of posters, there were some pretty funny ones along the way that people wrote to energize the runners. This was my personal favorite:
"It takes balls to run. Other sports just play with them."
hahaha

This is what greeted us at every other mile marker - tons and TONS of trash! Runners are so messy! That's about 7,000+ cups at 10 or so different locations. But I understand that there really isn't much time for the serious runners to neatly place their cup in the trash. But were we serious runners?? Not by a long shot. Not only did we take the race pretty easy, but we stopped for Icy Hot leg rubs at each of these pit stops as well. Talk about the best race EVER. I just couldn't believe that they had so many volunteers ready and willing to give us water and rub our legs to boot!


After the 7 miles of hills, I was getting pretty exhausted. Mark was super sweet and walked for quite a bit of it with me, even though he still had the energy to run circles around me. Running into town was AWESOME. People were lining the streets out in their driveways cheering us on and giving us popsicles and ice. Some people even brought out their hoses and sprayed us down, which was REALLY needed. By this time it was quite toasty outside.

Mark and I crossed the finish line together in 5 hours and 15 minutes and were greeted by our awesome family. Roger finished just 8 minutes ahead of us - not sure why we never saw each other after we split since we ended up being so close at the finish. But we all made it - Mark with his chest cold, Roger with his infected ingrown toenail, and me with my gimp leg. Hooray for crazies like us!