26.2

First of all I just want to warn everybody that this is going to be one long freaking blog. It is more of a journal entry since I kind of count this as my journal. Last Saturday I lost my running marathon virginity. I ran the Kansas City marathon. It was awesome! I have been training since April with my pal named Amy. In these runs I have learned a lot of wierd things about her that I am sure she would not want me to share, so I wont Amy. Vice versa for her too, so you better keep your mouth shut! Anyways I want to share my experience of running 26.2 miles. My greatest fear of this adventure was that I was going to lose control of my bowels and mess my pants; but this did not happen. I will start from the beginning. The race started at 7 am in downtown Kansas City. We left at about 6:10 am and hit some pretty heavy traffic. Oh and I just wanted to note that Travis volunteered to come early with us because he wanted to see the starting line (how sweet is that?) So we packed him a camping chair, a pillow, a blanket and of course Joanna (his computer). Anyways, by the time we parked, met up with some people and walked half a mile to the starting line (which i'm counting as mileage, so I should rename this blog 26.7) the race had already started. We were about 5 minutes behind! I could see the huge mass of people about 300 yards ahead of me. Amy and I kind of freaked out and just started booking it to catch up; which isn't very smart if you want to keep a constant pace. We were weaving and bobbing through the crowd.(Oh and I have to mention that we had gone to Target earlier that week and bought matching running outfits.) We probably ran the first 3 miles at a 7:15 minute pace. We even got people yelling at us saying "you got 24 more miles to go, you may want to pace it." So. We finally got to where we felt we needed to be and kept a pretty steady pace. My favorite part of the race was mile 6. I was feeling really fresh and we were in a cool part of the city and the water station was Halloween decorated. It was fun. The race was extremely hilly though. I think I started to hit my wall at mile 14 (and that is when my bowels started barking; I felt like my worst fear was going to come true). I was going to stop at the next potty which was at mile 16, but when we got there, the feeling went away and I didn't want to sacrifice my time. I actually hit a high at mile 20. It was wierd because everyone says that you can train for the first 20 miles of a marathon, but the last 6 you are on your own. When I saw the mile marker I got a wierd feeling. It was almost an emotional feeling knowing I was so close to the finish. Well, that feeling lasted about 2 miles. I don't know what genious planned the route, but from mile 22 to 23 there was a ginormous hill. This about did me in. I felt like I was going to die. I made it through the hill, but I did not want to stop at anymore drink stations because I knew that if I stopped running it would be too difficult to start. My wise friend Amy said that it was dumb to skip any drink stations, so I listened to her and walked while I drank (I learned the hard way in the first drink station that you can't run and drink at the same time, red gatorade everywhere!). The last mile was really cool. There were a lot of runners starting to cramp up, some on the side of the road stretching and some people had to start walking. I felt a little adrenaline and booked it to the finish line with Amy. It was such a neat feeling because I saw my Dad on the sidelines cheering for us and he ran to the course and gave me a high five along with my sister Sadie, right before we crossed. Then I saw Trav filming me with the video camera and my mom with her huge camera. Yay! We finished. I had an awesome fan club. It was the coolest feeling!!! Even though we started 5 minutes after the race, we had chips on our shoes that started the official time when we passed the starting line, which made the start to finish time accurate. Our time was 3 hours and 48 minutes.




Highlights of the marathon:
Haunted mile 6 and the drink station
Amy and my matching outfits and getting called twins along the whole race
At mile 14 drink station the guys passing out water were wearing nothing by tighty-whities
Realizing that Kansas city is actually gorgeous
Watching Amy try to eat goo
Meeting random people ie: Zach who tried to run the Chicago marathon 2 weeks earlier and quit because of the intense heat, and the "real" twins that wore matching outfits
People running in costumes: a turtoise and a hair, a nun and a monk, a mohawk man oh and this isn't a costume, but a man ran the whole thing bare foot
Seeing our friend Nancy qualify for Boston being 40 years old
Mile 20 and the last .2 of a mile stretch
The most amazing weather you could ask for
The magic jelly bean that Amy held the whole run in her hand
Seeing my family at the finish line
Running arm in arm with Amy and the announcer announcing that "they must be friends"
All the random people (such as homeless people on the side of the streets) cheering
The free food afterwords and eating whatever I wanted

Lowlights of the marathon:
Being late and having to find a hole in the crowd to pass people
Barking bowels at mile 14
Realizing I paid 50 bucks for this torture
Hills
Goo (gross)
The post race visit to the port-o-potty
Being sore
Making fun of a girl who was wearing a ton of make up and then realizing that she beat us

I think that about sums it up. I think I'm going to retire for awhile but will make a comeback sooner or later. It was a great experience! Thanks to Amy, Nancy and Scott for the great runs! And thanks to my family for being there and supporting. And thanks to my husband for supporting through encouragement (couldn't get his butt out of bed to go on any runs but he was always there for me in spirit).