Rock N Roll Marathon

Nov 15, 2009

26.2 miles

My time: 4:57:41

My first and most likely my last marathon. 26.2 is just too far for me, plain and simple.

Ever since the Ironman my knee had been hurting me when I would run. Like an idiot I ignored this. Big mistake. I think some sort of brace would have helped dramatically.

I was exhausted before the ran start and that turned out to be detrimental to my race. My friend Rachel was doing the half marathon and I wanted to stick with her until mile 10. That quickly changed when I had to hit the port o potty at mile 2. Good thing too because I really would have held her back. She did really well. In fact she finished in 2:02:00. I wish I could have kept up but that was just the begining of the worst race of my life.

By mile 8 I was ready to quit. My stomach hurt and my knee was hurting. When 10 miles had passed and the half marathoners were splitting off I was so tempted to join them. I am glad I stuck it out, sort of. At least I have a finishers medal to show for it. My time at 13.1 was 2:15 so I already knew I wasn't going to get my 4:15:00 goal but I figured 4:30 was still good. By mile 15 my knee was really really starting to hurt. I called Jason and told him I was struggling and I was going to be a lot slower than I had planned. By mile 18 my knee was excruitiatingly painful. It hurt the most to walk and to attempt to get back into a run. I was hobbling along side the rode and crying for the remainder of the race. Several people asked me if I was okay and if I needed medics. I told them I was fine. I am such a liar. I have never felt anything like this pain before. My brain saying "run", well at least "jog" and my knee just wouldn't do it. My jog would quickly turn into a hop and skip before it came back to a limping walk. At 20 miles I sat down and cried. For the first time ever I thought I might not finish the race. I couldn't imagine going another 6 miles like this. I made it to a medic tent at 22 miles and a doctor asked me about my knee. He said it was some tendonitis and all he could do was give me tylenol and ice. I was hoping he had a hack saw and would just remove the whole lower portion of my leg. The tylenol helped a lot or at least it had a placebo effect. I was able to get back to a jog and I dared not stop because restarting was too painful. I did stop a few times for food and drink but at 24 miles I finished the thing out with a jog. At 23 miles I called Jason again and told him I was only at 23 miles and was moving pretty slow. He said "Your almost done!" Ya right. Longest 3 miles of my life. Most of the marathoners were walking after about 20 miles. It was hot outside and very humid. I was so miserable. Good thing I wore Brother's fanny pack :) I was able to carry food, Biofreeze and my pride all in that little bag.

Overall the course was not pretty. We ran along side some cemeteries which had pinatas on some graves?!?! And we ran through the ghetto. Not too scenic. All of the bridges we ran under reeked of urine. There were lots of port o potties for the runners but no toilet paper. Useless. There was lots of water and food along the way but the water was warm. The Ironman provided ICE COLD water and that was really refreshing. Of course warm water is much better than no water.

The finish line finally came up out of the blue and I was too tired to throw my arms up or do some kind of victory dance. I looked for Jason, Rachel and Paul and didn't see them. There were a lot of spectators out there. I felt terrible that Rachel had to wait 3 hours for me to finish :(

I went straight to the medic tent and got a bag of ice and sat down. It felt fantastic. I chugged some water and stretched a little and then head out to find my people. Lincoln had fallen asleep because I took to long.

I am glad I can say I have done a marathon but it almost killed me. I won't ever do one again. Haha, but if I do I won't run it alone. I need someone by my side to share the misery. Its too lonely out there for 5 hours alone. I'll stick with half marathons and triathlons I think.