Disney Marathon 2008

On Sunday, seven months of marathon training culminated at the Disney Marathon. Disney had a fireworks show prior to the start which was cool. It was hard to pace myself when they had music blasting and these cool "fire"works going.

This is a before-race shot...@ 3:45 am on Sunday. I was cold and there was some mist so I "bagged" myself until the race start.

As always, I had the moral support of my amazing husband throughout the course. This time my mom was able to join him, she had never seen me participate in a long distance race before.

Although it wasn't a sunny day, it was still hot and humid. The weather was not ideal for a marathon but I kept my pace...for the first half at least.

Below: Mile 12 or 13, I'm frantically looking through Nick's pockets for my "power juice", Ensure! I have some good days, and some bad days when my sugar level just drops. By this point, I was worried about missing Nick out on the course since he was carrying my backups. I knew if I missed him, I would've "crashed" soon after that. There's only so much energy power gels/shots can give me.

This is me after getting my Ensure...all better :)

I should also mention that my aunt and uncle were nice (or crazy) enough to sign up as volunteers. Their duty was to be "Screaming Fans"....basically to stand up for 5 hours and cheer runners as they ran through. As you can see, my aunt took it very seriously. I never saw her cheering when I ran through but he was able to catch up to me and take some pics.

Below are some of the professional pictures. I can't get them to be any bigger.

My official net time was 5 hours 16 minutes something. Prior to the race, my goal was 5 hours and at some point it might have been 4:45 but at about mile 21 or so, I just wanted to finish the darn race!!! I've never had problems controlling my heart rate until this race. At mile 23, my heart rate was very high and I couldn't bring it down so I walked a lot. This is obviously a sign of stress/strain (I blame lack of sleep and slacking on training for 2 weeks prior to the race). So, I took it easy and enjoyed the view until I saw the finish line and adrenaline took over. I ran as fast as I could and I didn't even feel the pain. After I got my medal and adrenaline wore off, I realized I couldn't move my legs. I stood in place and called for a volunteer to come to me. I asked for ice and since I had skipped the medical tent at the finish line, there was no where else to get ice. I had to suck it up and shuffle over to the family reunion area where I saw my mom and just crashed on the floor. I believe that's when I said, "I'm not doing this again."

So, even though I don't have children and have not experienced labor pains, I think I can relate to mothers who say you forget the pain. On Sunday, I told Nick if I would've had a cell phone at mile 21 I would've called him and asked him to "never let me do this again!". However, it's been 5 days now and I don't recall the pain. I remember tears coming out at the end but I don't remember the pain being as crippling as I described it on Sunday. I'm not saying that I'm ready to go back out on the road again because I'm not. Seven months of having running dictate how I live my life is enough for me to want a break from it. But I know I can and probably will do this again someday....maybe after experiencing actual labor pains. :)