Monday, April 27, 2009

Marathon

After ten weeks of intense training with training buddy Jeremy Carr, I'm proud to say we've both completed the Big Sur Marathon. I'm now lying awake in bed at 5:30AM writing this because my joints are in excruciating pain, but I'm still very happy that we did it.

A few weeks before the marathon, I came down with an awful cold that impacted my training. I was ready to throw in the towel, and just support Jeremy through the race. I went back and forth on the decision for days, even up to the day before the marathon. Then finally, I realized it was inevitable, I couldn't let my training partner down, and I couldn't NOT do this for Meimei.

We woke up at 3am on the day of the race, drove the buses that would take us to the starting line after driving the full length of the Highway 1 course in the pitch black darkness of the early morning. At the starting line we waited in the cold for two hours, huddled together to stay warm, for our 6:45am start. We looked so cold that some girl came up and gave us two extra pairs of gloves.

Luckily I had those gloves because just as we were running to the start, minutes before the race, some woman TRIPPED me and I fell flat on my face, ripping my gloves and bruising my knees.

Moments later, we were off, grouped together with the 3:40 pacer. We stuck with him until Hurricane Point, 13 miles into the race. Following hurricane point, we were behind by only minutes, managing our pace so as to make it through the hardest parts of the race - rolling hills and canted roads between miles 19 and 23.

We broke it down by mile. At this mile we'll eat a Gu Pack, at this mile we'll walk for 10 seconds, etc. In what seemed like magic, mile 15 turned to mile 19, and gradually through the twenties. We picked up pace for the finish, and crossed the line together.

3 hours and forty five minutes.

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