Myrtle Beach Marathon

I finally got a second to put the video clips together and download my pictures from the marathon.

We made it!

It started at 6:30am on Saturday morning, Feb. 19th, and we finished about 4.5 hours later. The first 13 miles, I was feeling great, we were running faster than our planned pace, and I was loving it. Unfortunately, we had to stop 4 times along the race for me to rush into a porta-john, which was unusual. It started getting pretty hot out, 70 degrees and sunny, and I was feeling a little dehydrated. So mile 13 through 18 was a little tougher and we slowed down. From mile 18 to 23, I was feeling great. After mile 23, it was...rough. All the muscles in my legs felt like rocks grinding against my joints, even my arm was cramping up, we were dripping sweat, it was hot, my feet were full of blisters, and I was literally just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. When we hit mile 26, I started crying a little bit, out of both joy and pain, and then Bryce pulled out the camera (again) so I snapped out of it.

Then I saw it. The finish line. The beautiful beautiful finish line. Hallelujah Lord!

We did it! I never in my life thought I would run a marathon. Never wanted to. Didn't even want to want to. Now that I've done it, I know it's possible and it's not intimidating anymore. The day of and the next day, we were walking like penguins, but by Tuesday, we went for a short 3 mile run. Recovery was a lot easier than I expected. Contrary to other people who get obsessed with it, I am not already planning my next marathon race. I would like to do another half marathon though. I could see myself doing another one at some point, but not any time soon. Not only is the training very time consuming, but it gets expensive!