Hey Nicole!
I had a blast in Nashville. HOLY HILLS!!! The only part of my body that is sore is my butt! I should have done extra squats! I felt great the entire run. I never crashed....really! (even though my time does not reflect it) As I closed in on ending the first 13.1, I felt great. It was a grueling uphill after uphill. I kept thinking, after this only hill 14 and 16 will be steep the rest will be fairly flat. That elevation chart said so.....I mean after all, it's a marathon. The amount of hills that were in the first half would not be in the second half, WRONG! ..there were more!
I actually became slap happy after as miles 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 continued to be hill after hill with not much down hill to them. I seriously was giggling. I helped out other runners as they started to panic (I shared my snacks and babbled about the weirdness of my everyday life to keep them going:) Made several friends along the way. We all played leap frog with each other. One running ahead then passing each other. After mile 22, it was very difficult to find someone running. It was seriously hundreds of people walking (ask Lanell, we are still in disbelief of what we saw. AND she was 30 min ahead of me) with 1.2 miles to go, the people from Seattle that I had been running with stopped and said they were "done" and would be walking the rest of the way. Mile 26 was of course, uphill. There was NO way in hell that I was going to walk any part of the last 1.2 miles! They all said, "see you later, Green Socks" and I took off. I smiled big the whole way!
It was weird, no one seemed to be able to read my "Irunmommy" logo on my bright pink and green uniform, but only mentioned my green socks the entire way. "Go Green Sock Blondie!" I heard this a million times. One man with a concussion and a bag of ice on his head shouted, "you are a very nice looking in your watermelon outfit" lol!
I was very thirsty for the last 6 miles, but my body was not liking anytime I took a sip of water. They were handing out salt packets and people were just eating the salt straight(barf) I mixed it in my water bottle and drank it. Tasted like the ocean! My stomach seemed okay with it. It still felt like water was sloshing around my body, but the salty water helped in some weird way. It was almost like the water was displaced in my body. It wasn't in my stomach, but rolling around my organs. No cramping though.
Although, I slowed down a considerable amount in the second half. I felt okay about it. I came to grips with it around mile 18. I had not crashed, I felt good, the hills were just really freaking steep. I truly believe Nashville has to be one of the tougher marathons (...at least that's what the guys from Seattle said) It makes me want to do another one...but a flatter one :) Funny, at the expo the people from Carmel, IN were there and were advertising for their marathon on June 12th. I told them that is where we are moving to. Seriously, that's our new suburb. They handed me a bunch of different running club information. I told John I was going to run another marathon in 6 weeks......he totally ignored me and said, "let's go to Disney next weekend. I'll pour you a glass of wine....a big glass of wine"
I was totally prepared for this run! Physically and mentally. In my twenties, I told many people that I wanted to run a marathon but I probably never would do it. It feels great to have actually run 26.2 miles! I am very proud no matter how slow I was for a good chunk of it. It was an amazing experience! Thank you for inspiring me and saying, "of course you can run a marathon!" You would be surprised how many told me I couldn't or shouldn't. I showed them!!!!
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TW
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