A year ago today my mom passed away. I know how proud she was last year (September 23, 2007) when I won--it gave her something to focus on for the remaining 5 days of her life. I knew that she would be proud if I ran the race again, but I didn’t officially decide to run it until Saturday, September 27th, at 1:00 pm. HA!
Phillip and I went to the expo to pick up his race packet for the half, and I decided to go ahead and give the marathon a shot. This coming off of no training, except for a few 17 milers over the last 2 months.
We had perfect weather this morning: clear and no wind; race start was about 56 degrees out, race end was near 75 or so. Exactly the same as last year.
I didn’t even know what to expect. It wasn’t supposed to matter—this race was for my mom, and the goal was to finish and do it in her memory. When I started the race at 7:00 am this morning, I did not feel prepared at all. I was in the bathroom when the gun went off, mainly because the race director does NOT place enough POJ’s out for this race. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, I finished up, ran out, and jumped in the crowd. By this time I was behind the 4:15 pacer!!! There were so many people around I thought I would never make it through the first mile in a decent time. As it was I missed the first mile marker. I was only wearing my Timex, so I don’t have the first mile split. I do have the 2nd mile, though.
Miles 1 & 2 - 15:17
So do with that what you will. At this time I was just running along, thinking about what in the hell I thought I was doing just running a marathon on a whim. But I kept going, and tried to each mile a 7:53 mile. It wasn’t really working out that way.
Mile 3 – 7:23
I missed the fourth mile split, also, but I have the 5th mile.
Miles 4 & 5 - 14:53
After mile 5 I have all my splits, so I’ll list them here. You can see that my splits are all over the place—this is due to me trying to force myself to slow down.
Mile 6 – 7:25
Mile 7 – 7:34
Mile 8 – 7:48 (fairly long, massive hill)
Mile 9 – 7:27
Mile 10 – 7:40
Mile 11 – 7:43
Mile 12 – 7:51 (another long, steeper hill)
Mile 13 – 7:36
Mile 14 – 7:46
Mile 15 – 7:26
Mile 16 – 7:42
Mile 17 – 7:38
Mile 18 – 7:34
Mile 19 – 7:29
Mile 20 – 7:38
Mile 21 – 6:56 (I think this mile was short, and the next was long)
Mile 22 – 8:00
Mile 23 – 7:25
Mile 24 – 7:18
Mile 25 – 7:21
Mile 26 – 7:24
Mile .2 – 1:32
I never really had any trouble, just that the only Gu was at mile 18—but that wasn’t the problem. I knew it would be that way because that’s the way it was last year. The problem is they only had Raspberry. YUK. Last year they had a variety, and I got Chocolate Mocha. YUM. Anyway, that’s the only sort of fuel I had, besides water sips at 3 different tables throughout the race.
The entire race I had no idea of my time, place, or anything. I didn’t really care. I wasn’t ever passed, and at mile 24 or so I passed another woman who sounded like she was having an asthma attack.
When I got to the finish line my clock time was 3:18:58. I knew it would be a little different than that because of the chip. It was. After what seemed endless amounts of time, they posted results on the side of a trailer—
3:17:46 (last year was 3:22:40)
7:33 average pace
4/152 women
37/429 finishers
1/27 age group (30-35)
I’m neither disappointed nor upset with any of this. I totally didn’t expect anything going into this race because, well, I didn’t train. Here are some photos of Phillip and I after the race.
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