Saturday night, we stayed at the Depot in Minneapolis which was only a few blocks from the start line. After picking up our packets and wandering around the expo in St. Paul, we went to bed early and tried to get a good night's sleep.
In the morning, we left our hotel room a little later than we had planned, and arrived at the start line just in time to watch the wheelers take off at 7:55. Then we got a little nervous because we still had to drop off our sweat bags so we jogged all the way back to corral 3 and dropped off our bags and then we only had a few minutes to stand around before the start. At least we didn't have much time to stand out in the cold and freeze! It was a very chilly morning, in the 40s.
Selfie with our throw away sweatshirts still on before the start
We talked to the 5:30 pacer before the race and she said she was doing a 5/1 run/walk ratio so we thought we would stick with our original plan of taking a short walk break every mile and hopefully stay ahead of her. Well, that strategy worked for the first 12 miles or so.
Around the half marathon point is where we started to fall apart (way too early in a race of this distance). We were both really cold, the sun never came out and it was windy so every time we took a walk break we would freeze. Jessie's knee was giving her trouble, and I started to feel that familiar dizzy feeling that plagues me from time to time during long runs. I was following my nutrition plan up until that point, but I really wished I would have carried water with me because the water stations felt so far apart and I was thirsty the whole time.
Around 13.1 was also when the 5:30 pacer caught up with us, which is about right because my watch said 2:45. Since we were both feeling bad, we decided to drop down to the 5/1 and try to stay with the group, but it didn't last more than a couple of miles before they were way ahead of us. The last 10 miles we did a ton of walking and our spirits were not too high. We had to make 2 bathroom stops, too. The only real bright spot was when we saw Jackie, our faithful cheerleader who had made us an awesome sign and everything. She took my hat and gave me a dry headband too, bless her heart. I remember I told her how miserable we were and that I would never do this again in a million years...or something to that effect. When we got to Summit Ave. the crowds were a lot thinner than I remembered from the 10 mile last year...because we were truly in the back of the pack. One of the water stations even ran out of water.
At some point we decided that we were not going to quit and we were going to finish this thing no matter what. After that I kept looking at my watch to calculate how fast we needed to walk in order to finish in the 6 hour time limit. Basically we needed to keep a 15:00 pace for the last several miles so we walked quickly with small bursts of running thrown in. There was an older man race walking with the name "Dan" on the back of his shirt and he could walk so fast! He would pass us walking and then we would jog a little and pass him and then a few minutes later he would walk past us again. He basically paced us for several miles (I would say miles 21-25 maybe?).
Sometime after mile 24 I turned around to a sight that made my stomach sink: the sweep vehicle, a school bus, was in sight behind us. I told Jessie we needed to pick up the pace so we did that as much as we could, trying to stay far enough ahead of the bus that we wouldn't get picked up. At one point we realized we hadn't seen Dan in a while, and I think he must have gotten picked up. I looked at the list of finishers after us (not many) and I didn't see anyone named Dan.
Finally we came to the cathedral and turned the corner to see the capital in the distance. We started to run as fast as we could; it is pretty funny (sad?) to watch the finish line footage because it looks like I am running in slow motion, even though it felt like I was sprinting at that point. I have never felt such relief in my whole life than when I crossed that finish line. I was so glad to see Jackie again, and my mom at the finish line. At one point in our misery, Jessie and I were talking about whether we would rather give birth or run another marathon, and we both decided we would rather give birth (and she had her kids without pain meds)! So if you have ever given birth you might have an idea just how bad we were feeling.
"sprinting" to the finish
So although we had a disappointing time and a miserable couple of hours, I still feel proud that I finished a marathon. I have a whole new respect for the distance, that's for sure. I can see where our training was not quite adequate with only 2 runs longer than a half marathon, and we took our taper a little too far those last couple of weeks, I think because we were feeling burned out from training. I haven't run in the 12 days that have passed since the race, but my legs are itching to go for a run so I think I will get back out there! Going forward I am going to focus on enjoying running shorter distances again and maybe even setting a half marathon PR next year!
Just so cold!
I think I'm going to buy this one...the first race photo I will have purchased. We just look way too happy to be done!
