Race Weekend

What a great weekend! We all had a great time and for the most part a great experience. Matt and I arrived in San Antonio on Friday night around 10. Sarah and Ryan arrived earlier that day. Saturday started out early as I headed to take the Praxis. After that we headed to the expo to meet up with Sarah. Here we are:

After hitting the expo we all went to eat a late lunch as we were really hungry. After that we went to the hotel and had an uneventful evening as I was in bed asleep by 9. The next morning Sarah met me at my hotel around 5:45 and we walked the 2 blocks to the shuttle. Of the 30,000 people there, I actually ran into MC and Clay! Who would've thought! We decided to meet up with them after the race. Sarah and I had time to go to the restroom and then headed to our corral. There were 32 of them and you are placed based on your time. We were in corral 4 and I thought we were kinda close to the starting line considering there were some FAST people there! I put my projected marathon time for 3:35. It was pretty cold at the beginning of the race and most people were dressed for an arctic blast. We decided to get rid of our clothes before the race as we knew we would warm up fast. Matt blew me away when he showed up before the race(he had walked 4 miles to the starting line!) and took our picture.

Here we are minutes before the race.

And here we are at mile 8. Still hollering and feeling great.

This is around mile 12. Still feeling good. Ran with this lady for a few miles...age 52; 25 marathons; 5 Bostons under her belt!!! PR of 3:27

Here I am with a girl who ran with me for about 2.5 miles(she doesn't look as tired as me in this picture but I ended up running ahead of her;)). This is around mile 23 and feeling tired but still determined.

So here are my top things that made a big difference in the marathon:

1) Having a running partner. Sarah was the BEST and I could not/would not have done this with out her! Just 3.5 months ago I could not have run 5 miles without being out of breath! It's amazing what a difference a running partner makes. Kennedy gets credit too!! Her marathon is in 3 weeks.

2) Staying close to the marathon site and being able to walk to the shuttle that takes you to the starting line. This is a must! Road closures around the city are too risky and you don't want to be late on race morning!

3) My dear husband is VERY good with directions and I saw him about 10 times on the course. This was very helpful during the race, especially during the later miles. Between him and Ryan(they later met up together and did the last miles together), we saw them around 12 times and that was GREAT!

4) Having our names on our shirt helped ME a lot. I made fun of my mom for doing this when she ran a marathon. It really helps having people call out your name! Especially at the END!

5) A running buddy from high school texted me on my phone the day before telling me that the half way mark was at mile 20. TRUE STATEMENT!

6) More determined than ever to qualify for the Boston Marathon(3:40 was the time I had to run) and do it with my mom who qualified last year. I think she is more excited than I am.

Another thing that helped was running the first half SLOW. We felt great the first 13 miles. At mile 16 I still felt great and decided to surge a little to make up for the pace we went out in. Sarah's stomach was hurting a little and she still had an awesome run(3:50....40 minute PR for her!). So there is my race summary and I hope I didn't bore all of you too much. Boston is April 20, so I plan to take some time off before taking on the daunting task again!