Marathon Relay Report

I survived! I ran my 5.7 miles and made it through.

I woke up to a beautiful day. The sun was shining. The air was crisp. And the temperature was about 9. Yup. Nine degrees. Awesome. I ate my Special K and packed a bag. Since I was running the second leg of the race, I wanted to bring some comfy clothing to keep warm after I ran.

Janis and I drove together and we met Elisa at the Suny Rec building. We checked in and Janis got prepared to run the first part of the race. Her leg was 9.2 miles. We all went outside to see them off and holy cow. It was flippin' cold. After they started running, the rest of us piled back inside and hung out. We had figured out that Janis would probably finish in 90 minutes. So around 11:30 we went out to wait for her and she passed the "baton" to me. (Side note - there was not really a baton. It was more of a high five and Janis came in and I started running. I did feel like there should have been something more official to pass off. But that's besides the point.)

I started running. Luckily I had my Ipod with me because it was kind of a lonely race. Not a lot of people were out there and the people that I saw all passed me like I was standing still. Needless to say, I kept plugging along. My foot was feeling okay until I hit mile 2. And then it started hurting. I chose to ignore it. There was no way I was going to stop. And if I did stop - there was no one to rescue me. So I kept going. I listened to my music and ran along. Surprisingly, I didn't feel that cold. The sun was beating down and the wind had stopped. It was actually a nice run. My foot was still throbbing - but I made it to mile 5.7 and handed off the "baton" to Elisa. I even managed to run another .3 mile so I could have an even 6 miles.

Technically, I was supposed to run 9.2 today. But considering the fact that I hadn't run all week, and my foot was hurting, I decided to call it a day at 6 miles. I was happy just to get back in the swing of things. Now I know I can run through the foot pain. And so - the training continues...Hopefully!

Meanwhile - I made it back to the Suny building, changed clothes, and had some soup. We hung out and waited for Elisa. Her leg was 11 miles and it took her about 2 hours. All in all, our total marathon time was 4 hours and 35 minutes. Not bad! We were happy that we did it and it was a ton of fun!