Seattle Mom Blogs

Yeah, it didn’t go so well.  The weather was perfect- cool, overcast but not raining.  I got dropped off literally 2 blocks from the start line in plenty of time as we hit no traffic down to the start.  Gun went off, I headed out.  The plan was to take this marathon easy and finish at about the 5 hour mark.

My first mile was 8:37.  Huh, need to slow down.  It took about 4 miles for my legs to start to loosen up and, out on I-90 and right as I was starting to relax into the race, BAM.  My foot hit a bolt that had worked itself up and was raised about 3 inches above the road.  I went down hard.  Scraped both palms (blood!), smashed my knee and scraped it up and wrenched my shoulder.  The guy who had been running next to me was very nice and stopped to make sure I was ok.  I hopped up (EMBARRASSED) and said I was fine and started running again.  Oddly enough, I was only embarrassed for about 2 minutes.  After that, I was too busy assessing all of the aches and pains shooting through my body.

So, yeah, that was right before Mile 5.  Still had 21.2 miles to go.  I kept running and trying to push through the various pains.  I hit the half marathon mark at 2:03.  Not my best half marathon time but respectable enough.  But wait.  I was going to run this one in 5 hours which means I had about 3 more hours to run the 2nd half.  OK- I can do this.

Right at Mile 14, cramps starting shooting through my stomach.  Every few steps, I would gasp.  I ended up stopping at every port-a-potty (Honey Bucket, whatever) for the next FIVE miles.  That was a lot of stops.  Finally, after emptying my entire stomach and intestinal track of every molecule, the cramps went away.  Good.  And we’re at Mile 19 so only 7.2 to go.

Somewhere between Mile 20 and Mile 21 (3:30 mark), we passed the Seattle Tennis Club and made a left.  And were hit with a STEEP hill.  Yeah.  Walk.  Turn left onto Madison and surprise! Uphill again.  OK. Walk again.  Alright, hit the crest of Madison and headed downhill so run time.  Run through the Arboretum and turn onto Interlaken.  Hill.  Slow to a painful shuffle.  Curse the decision to run this damn marathon.  Think about how I just don’t want to be running anymore.

Oh but wait, it gets better.  We cross 24th (or is it 23rd there, I never know) and head up up up.  Yeah.  I pretty much walked all of the Interlaken trail.  Finally came out in Capital Hill and was able to run up to the crest and start down the hill.  OK, shuffle run.  Kept it up until we hit a slight uphill.  Had to stop and walk.

Finally made it to the freeway overpass and started shuffle running again.  Oh yeah, downhill on Republican!  But wait, ouch ouch ouch.  We somewhere between Mile 25 and Mile 26 and everything hurts.  Oh yeah, I realized on the ride to the start that I had forgotten to take ibuprofen before the race.  Dumb.

Kept up my increasingly slow shuffle run until we turned onto Mercer and yep, you guess it, had to run uphill again.  Walk.  Fortunately, it was short and we passed Mile 26.  Only .2 left to go.  Either I have finally gotten smarter about that last .2 or I was in just too much pain but I held off from sprinting immediately.  I waiting until there was .1 mile left and then I decided to ignore every signal from my body and sprinted to the finish line.  End time was 4:58:20.  So, I ended up at the 5 hour mark after all.

Fortunately, I am already getting over the feeling of hating all marathons but my shoulder is still killing me.  I’ve decided to swim tomorrow.  Swim slowly.  Hopefully that will help ease some of the soreness.