I did it!!!

I RAN A MARATHON!!! Yes we need the caps for that because this is kind of a big deal for me! This was such a great experience and I'm so glad I did it and relieved it's done! I've wanted to run a marathon for a couple of years now. I wanted to run one in 2007 but opted to do the Sedona Half instead. That also was a great accomplishment for me!

In January I decided I was going to run the Ogden Marathon, registered, and payed so there was no backing out! I then found and printed off a training schedule and followed it pretty religiously! It was an 18 week schedule. However, I had 20 weeks so I just repeated the last 2 weeks training. The training was intense and I'm pretty burned out! My last really long training run was 23 miles and after I ran that I got into bed and told Spencer I think one marathon is enough! All my training was done on a treadmill, not one day was run outside. To compensate I ran on an incline of 1 or 2, towards the end of my training I just ran on an incline of 1. I always tried to average 6 miles per hour, which didn't always happen during my long runs! So I'm certainly not a fast runner, just persistent! I added up my mileage for the last 20 weeks and I've run 661.2 miles. The most I ran in a week was 43 miles.

The last week I've been pretty nervous! Friday night I asked Spencer if he would give me a blessing and that seemed to calm my nerves. I woke up at 3:50 am on Saturday (yesterday) morning to catch a shuttle to the starting line at 4:45. My mom flew in for this and was the lucky one who got to wake up early and drive me to the shuttles. (Thanks mom!) It was really chilly at the top of Ogden Canyon. Luckily they had fires going up there for us to warm up by. My hands were frozen and didn't start warming up probably until about mile 7 or 8. Mile 14 was the "hill" of the race and I was dreading it! It actually was not that bad! Maybe it was better than I expected because I was expecting the worse! I just made up my mind to run up the entire hill and I did and I felt great when it was over! Mile 18 was beautiful! It was a nice long down hill! I met some really nice people and everyone seemed to be very kind, courteous, and grateful to and for all the police and volunteers that helped this event take place. I ran with a man for a while who was running his 10Th and he set a nice pace for me! I felt great up until about mile 18 when my body started hurting pretty badly and I couldn't keep up with him anymore! My heart felt great but body was so sore! I forgot to take IB Profen before the marathon. They had water and food stops about every mile after mile 14 and from mile 17 on I was stopping at every one of them! Each time it was a struggle to get my body running again. At mile 25 I didn't stop to get water because I knew if I did I wouldn't be able to start running again! The last 3/4 mile of the marathon seemed to take FOREVER! There was a sign up that showed when we were only 1/2 mile from finishing and and then a 1/4 of a mile from finishing. I think those signs made it worse! I finally finished and was thrilled to see I did it in 4 hours 39 minutes, which is a minute faster than I wanted to run it in. And actually my time may be more like 4:37 because I was at the back of the line when we began the race. The times from our timing chips aren't posted yet, so I don't know my exact time. Like I said, I'm not fast but this time was great for me!

Overall the marathon seemed to go by really quickly! It was a beautiful course and the weather was nice so it was a great day to run a marathon! After the marathon I could barely walk! I'm so sore and can't feel some of my toes! I'm having a really hard time walking up and down our stairs and Bay keeps asking me if I'm okay! I'm great! I ran a marathon, I'm better than great!