How We Rolled to the Marshall Marathon- Part 2: The Race

Here are a few pictures of the weekend.

Rick does all of the driving for our marathons. He is very good at it, and I love him for it! I don't see how he can drive right after finishing a marathon. Seriously, we barely had time to take a shower and load the car before we had to turn around and head home this trip. At least one of us could prop our feet up!
Lots of smiles as we set out on the 7 hour car trip.

Carbo loading Thai-style (Rick's idea). It was a good one-- yum!

Monika was a super aunt on this trip. Here she is braving the cold so that the children can run some of their energy out! Seriously, she rode in the back with the children (watching all of their movies and such) and slept in our room (which included a child's 2 a.m. bed-wetting accident on the first night and LOTS of loud whispers), and she didn't complain once!

Packet pickup (Band competition in the background)

They had a free pasta dinner that we could not pass up. It was really neat to get to sit and talk with the other runners. The ones next to Rick were in their 60s and had done something like 100 marathons. The ones next to me had run the race last year and said they handed out the DVD "We Are Marshall" that year. What a neat touch!

I love the two-sided medal

Rick had a good idea to take a picture of all of the mementos all together. He opted for a fleece jacket instead of the shirt, but I really liked the logo and color of the shirt. My age group award (3rd place) is the pretty blue glass bowl.

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THE RACE

The race had a cold start (26 degrees), but we could drop off our clothes at our car and just walk right over to the start line. We both wore our arm sleeves, and they were a great choice for the entire race (ended in the 50s). I am a port-a-potty "snob" and use them only when I have no other choice (and even now pack my own sanitizer and baby wipes just in case), but we had the university's fitness center bathrooms for use pre-race. They were awesome!

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Rick and I had talked pace a little beforehand. He wanted 7:40s (it's actually a little more complicated than that and will hopefully be something he writes about in his blog entry about the race), and I wanted 8:00s. But it was so cold when we started that I went out at about 7:30s instead and even stayed near or ahead of him for awhile. I am so used to starting too fast that I knew it wasn't smart, but Rick told me later that it wouldn't have surprised him at all if I'd been able to keep that pace through the whole race (my race pace seems to have nothing to do with my training sometimes). I kept St. Louis in the back of my mind throughout the race, wanting to use that experience to motivate me to stay strong. It was a pretty small race, and I prefer the big crowds and music in some of the bigger races. There was also no gu on the course, so we both packed Cliff Blocks in little baggies and stashed them in our shorts (mine rubbed sores on my hip) and later shared stories about how we couldn't open them with our frozen fingers. Around mile 18, my pace just slowed and never picked back up. I attribute that mostly to my foot tightening up and am just thankful that it didn't act up worse. I was glad to see the roses at mile 25 (you could throw one into the memorial fountain for the Marshall University football players that died in the plane crash) and was convincing myself not to walk. When I finished, I saw and smelled hot dogs and hamburgers and gladly accepted a hot dog to eat! I saw Rick then and he told me he'd gotten a PR--3:14:50-- which will also qualify him for Boston 2012 (he will be 35 then so can use that time to qualify). I got a 3:29:25, the best I've done since having children. I felt a little bad that I had slowed down so much at the end and was on track for a PR myself until the last 9 miles or so, but overall I was really happy with my time.

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We had fun finding out through our discussions pre-race that we have now been running marathons together (first as friends, then while dating, and now married) for 10 years. I love having a spouse that runs marathons too!

1-7:36

2-7:50

3-7:33

4-7:35

5-7:29

6-7:20

7-7:35

8-7:32

9-7:30

10-7:31

11-7:33

12-7:29

13-7:37

14-7:32

15-7:36

16-7:40

17-7:38

18-8:16

19-8:06

20-8:13

21-8:34

22-9:01

23-8:54

24-9:11

25-9:22

26-9:09

.2-1:50

3:29:25 99th OA

8:00 pace (ironic that I still ended with an 8:00 pace!)