I started planning our race right away. We had to verify the distance markers on the greenway first to make sure we went the distance. I wanted this to be as much like a race as it could be so I started looking for race numbers I could get printed. I later found out I would have to get a minimum of 50 printed. I was a little discouraged by this but decided I would email the owner of Run For Your Life and see if we could buy some from him. Run for your life is the organization that runs most of our races. When he read my email about what happened in Myrtle Beach he was more than happy to donated two number 1 bib numbers for dad and I to wear.
(the early numbers are usually reserved for professionals to wear)I was really excited when we got them in the mail. I then checked the weather. It was calling for a wintry mix on the 5th which again disappointed me but we still decided to go for it hoping for the best.
I wasn't really nervous as the day approached because I was so used to the course. We were planning on running it on our three mile training loop (9 loops) which was really comforting. Josh and I went tot he cabin to pick up dad for the race we were fresh and ready to go.
We drove down to the greenway and a little bit after 11:00am we were off and running. I guess I should mention that we had gotten about a foot of snow during the week of our race. I had gone and looked at the part of the track I could see form my car and it looked fine. I was wrong. We rounded the first corner of the track right before .5 miles and saw about 30 yards of slush and snow on the track. We kind of looked at each other and grinned, thinking 'what have we gotten ourselves into?' . We didn't stop though and ran through it. Well, if you can call what we did running then we ran. It was more like a run/slide/skate. We got near .75 miles and saw about 50-75 yards of deep puddles. We decided to run in what we thought was grass. It was in actually more snow and mud. It was then relatively clear until 20 yards before our 1.5 mile turn around when we had to run through slush and snow again. Since we were doing nine loops that meant we were going to have to run through all that again 17 more times. We then thought this was a really bad idea but we still kept going.
The first three miles were ok but by mile 6 I had to pee really bad. One of the problems with this was the bathrooms at the greenway are closed until April so I had to pee in the open but when you gotta go you gotta go. We then started running again. Since I didn't want to have to do that every 6 miles I did my best to turn off the nerves that told me I needed to go for the next 4 hours. To my surprise enough it worked. The weather was pretty good except for the wind gusts of about 20 mph until the beginning of mile 9. Josh and Isa came by to cheer us on at the end of mile 9 which was greatly appreciated. Right after the left it started sleeting with 30mph gusts. I looked at dad and said" I'll be ok with a greenway half marathon if this keeps up" luckily it stopped in about five minutes and turned to rain. The middle is kind of a blur because I was just trying to keep moving. We had about every kind of weather imaginable. We really did have sun, sleet, snow, rain, and A LOT of wind. It got up to 40mph at some points. I have never heard of a marathon with water hazards before but I guess there is a first for everything. Part of it was even a trail marathon since we had to run off the path so much.
Mentally and physically it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be but I know I couldn't have done it alone. Josh always says that my biggest strength in running is I'll go wherever my dad goes and I guess this proves his point. Dad and I didn't talk about how far we had gone or how far we had to go until we had three loops left. We just had the occasional "you doin' ok?" or small talk. Time went by fast considering how long we ran but in the end we did it. We actually got to run a whole marathon.
When we finished josh, Mom , Samantha and Isabella were there waiting for us. The had a finish line tape up and a congratulations banner. Mom also brought little cannons full of streamers. It was really great.
We were so relieved to be done
Neither of us could stop smiling, or maybe it was wincing
We had to keep moving so we wouldn't cramp
What is even cooler is that we ran it in 4:53:27 (give or take a second) which is exactly what Abby and Terra got at myrtle beach. AFter we finished we went over to the cabin and got in the hottub with isa.
It felt so good!!
I'm sure josh will remind me of things I forgot to saw so I'll be adding to this post for a while.
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