And Finally- The Dallas White Rock Marathon

My marathon was December 13th and it was quite the experience. For a few days afterwords I was sure I'd never run another- but I already think I will. Not anytime soon... but someday. :)

Everyone told me that the marathon would be easy compared to the training, and they were totally wrong. It was horrible! To make a long (4 hours and 20 minutes) story short, it was supposed to be in the low 60s and sunny, so I dressed for that and so did everyone else. It ended up staying in the low 40s the entire time and misted until the last 40 minutes of the race. I was FREEZING the entire time. My entire body kept getting tense because I was so cold, and I think that's where my problems started. My hands were numb so I couldn't get by bites of power bar out of their bag. Then, around the 20 mile mark I just fell apart. Everything hurt SO bad, especially my right knee. This was really frustrating for me because my left knee was the one that gave me problems during the training. I stopped and cried for a minute at one point because I was just SO frustrated that I'd been training so hard for 4 months (somewhere around 550 miles in 4 months!) and wasn't doing as well as I was hoping to... and I couldn't remember why I had even wanted to do a marathon in the first place! Obviously I finished, but it was really hard. I was hoping after all of the training and with the adrenaline rush of the race and so many people that it would be more enjoyable. It really does feel great to accomplish this goal that I've been working so hard towards, and that's what makes me kind of want to do it again. Maybe my next one will be more fun :)

Anyways- my time was 4 hours 20 minutes even... a 9.9 min/mile pace. My goal was anywhere between 4 to 4.5 hours- but I was really hoping to finish more around 4 hours. It was crazy busy there. There were over 20,000 runners! Only around 5,000 were doing the actual marathon, and the others were doing the 1/2 marathon or marathon relay. Here are some pictures Scott took of the day:

Me (in the pink) about to cross the finish line

All of these people are runners! It was so packed at the beginning you could hardly even move

A gross picture- but hey, it documents the day :)

I really owe Scott a big thanks for being so supportive- he made me wheat pancakes with peanut butter on top the morning of every long run, gave me lots of massages, and was always really encouraging when I was having a hard time. Thanks hun!