Anyone who thinks running a marathon is fun has lost their marbles. I have the right to say that since I just ran one on Labor Day. My first marathon was 10 years ago and I had forgotten how I had sworn never to do it again after I ran it. Kind of like child birth. This time my motivation was actually so I could have some kind of sick family bonding experience with my brother and dad. It was my crazy idea.
I half heartedly trained for it since I sort of still believed that I am invincible and didn't need much preparation. This was probably my downfall. The first 20 miles were pretty dang tough, but the last 6.2 were nearly unbearable. I wanted to amputate my legs. Seriously. Fortunately, I was able to make it within my goal time at 4 hours 40 minutes though. Yea! Dad beat me even with serious shin spint problems. Michael my brother, came from San Francisco the day before, so he had some serious altitude sickness problems during the race that involved blacking out and throwing up. He still finished though. He's so tough! The medics gave him some nice oxygen after the run, thus the nose tubes in the picture.
We had a faithful cheer squad working the route at every point they could infiltrate by car. Bryan was the head and Lee was the second in command. The squad even made a sign for us to flash as we shuffled by. Zan was the papparazzi and documented our grimaces of pain and forced smiles as we ran by. I would have gotten a worse time without the cheer squad, that's for sure.
As for future plans, I think I'm going to stick to half marathons. Not as harmful to your health, but still nice and challenging.
2 comments:
I'm super-impressed, both by the actual running of the marathon as well as all the family support! That's awesome! (:
Ha! Love it. I hear you about Marathons, total murder. But you will always be able to say you did them! And I am jealous of your time, even after training like crazy for eight months I only squeaked in at 4.49.30 (barely under five hours!!) So, congrats!!
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