First off, yes, I did finish!
...but let's jump back to the beginning! My new friend Molly (who from here on I'm going to call my Running Mommy) met us in the start corral. We were in D - the slowest group. I say "D" is for "DONE" anyway. She dropped the most epic selfie photo bomb I've ever seen. Honestly just before I snapped this picture I wasn't even smiling - this huge genuine grin on my face is all because I saw her enthusiastic thumbs up in my rear-view mirror cam!
Just having been told "this is a big race" still didn't prepare me for the sheer number of people I saw lining up to cross the timing mats, though. I was starting to feel not-so-special. I mean, look at all these other people doing 13.1 miles with me! Well that's OK - you and I both know there are a lot more folks who were at home sitting on their couches or even more likely still in bed on Sunday at 7am.
I started out slow mostly because I was so surrounded by people that I couldn't find my own rhythm. Another factor I hadn't accounted for was all the notifications I'd get from the race app. On a normal training run, the only time my watch vibrates is when it's time for another walk/run interval. So if I'm walking - I run. If I'm running - I walk. All the notifications if cheers received from family through the race day app and time updates on myself and Joe were coming through so frequently that I had to look at my watch to see when my intervals were up. This made it difficult to get into a rhythm.
I had worn my headphones but didn't have them in my ears for the majority of the race. I was concerned with the battery in my phone holding out, so I turned the brightness down, shut down all the apps and notifications except the race-related app and tucked it into my pocket with the idea that I'd rather not pull it out for the rest of the race. I would have liked to have carried it in my hand and captured some pictures but I knew the battery wouldn't hold out for that silliness.
I watched my husband disappear into the crowd ahead of me, although not as quickly as I thought he would. By the time he hit the corner of the first turn around I had lost him. I saw no one else that I knew for the entire rest of the race. I listened to everyone else's conversations, thanked volunteers and first responders, and followed my run/walk prompts as they came through on my watch. In the first couple of miles I skipped a good bit of the walk breaks because my pace was so slow on account of the course congestion and aforementioned notification confusion. Once things thinned out I followed the run/walk intervals pretty religiously, even when I felt like I could skip walks. I knew that 13 miles was a new long for me and I really really didn't want to run out of steam at the end.
My first course landmark would be around mile 6 where I would meet my sister Mel to trade water bottles. I did have to dig my phone out once to look at the picture she sent me of where she was standing. I strode up with an empty bottle, switched it out for a full one and took about 45 seconds to hug, thank, and chat with my most-awesome-ever sister who was willing to get up at the butt crack of dawn to give her crazy sister a fresh water bottle. I was running "ahead of schedule" at that point so I wasn't frantic to get moving again. ROOKIE MISTAKE: I didn't get a picture of us!!! I regret that one :( The next bit of course I was really unfamiliar with but the crowd support was pretty robust - live music all over!! I got a little bored running up Carson so I popped in one headphone for about two miles until more crowds were gathered past Station Square. Somewhere in there I came up on a guy running with a dog named Spencer. I didn't think pets were allowed on the course so of course I had to check in with him and find out more about the charity he was running for. I still need to look them up.
On West Carson I started to have a little chest pain in the left side of my chest. I recalled that the exact same thing had happened to me on my last long run - it had gone away so I had completely forgotten about it until that moment. I lengthened my walk breaks a bit and it stopped. It did make me a little nervous, and I still wonder what that was all about. Who knows?
Then it was time for the dreaded Birmingham Bridge. I had been warned about this one. The full marathon runners were now separated from the half runners as the full course made a right at the end of the bridge and the half went left for the home stretch. It was awfully quiet on the bridge. I had been warned that the steady unrelenting uphill slope of the bridge and the hill following the bridge up into downtown are much maligned and hated by city runners. Truly, it was a longer incline that I've ever run probably, but not the steepest. Although I did have to lengthen the walk breaks (and the memory of the chest pain was still fresh in my mind), overall I would say that I put on a respectable performance. After reaching the crest of the hill, I started to play the "pass the next person" game, going from one runner to the next with the goal of simply passing them all one at a time. I really wasn't running "fast" at this point - I think somewhere in the 10min/mi pace. Looking back on my runkeeper split data I can see that I entirely skipped my last four walk breaks, as now the course turned downhill and I knew from everything I'd been told that it was all downhill to the finish!
I got a text from Mel and didn't read it correctly, so in the last few blocks I was running down the left side of the street looking for her when in fact she was on the right. She saw me but I did not see her. Total brain fart on my part. I guess the race app dropped my GPS around mile 11 so my mom, who was watching and cheering from her phone the whole way, sent me a text when I was still about a tenth of a mile from the finish. I shot a quick reply by voice-to-text from my watch. I meant to send audio but for some reason it replied with text:
Sounds like the ramblings of a tired idiot, huh?
I accidentally nearly knocked a couple of people over as I was sprinting for the finish line and they unexpectedly closed together in right in front of me. I turned sideways at the last minute to sneak through and apologized. Instead of being angry they waved me on, "GO! GO!!" So "GO" I did, and I crossed the finish line one minute and twenty four seconds ahead of my goal time.
Not too shabby for a first-timer, I think :)
Thanks for reading. More about the race and this week's recovery later!
