BI-LO Myrtle Beach Marathon - RunMarathon

I kissed Brad and wished he and Heidi good luck. Nate and I bs'd until the race start. It was still dark out and was a comfortable temp. I started with a l/s shirt on top of a s/s shirt and sock arm warmers. Almost immediately, I peeled the l/s shirt and ditched it. I had very slight knee pain at mile .25 and thought what a long day it could be, but that was the last of that knee bothering me. Nate and I kept a steady pace for the first few miles. Probably faster than I would have run solo, but it was OK. We stopped at mile 8, me to pee and Nate to tend to a blister. We felt like we were on Ocean forever! We finally made the turn and kept trying to find even road to run on. While the course was flat, there was some serious pitch in some of the roads.

This was the first marathon I've run with Nate (besides the 6 or so miles of IMLP) and I was laughing so hard at times, I couldn't continue to run. We would laugh about anyone or anything...movie quotes, body parts that hurt, flavors of GU. It made the time fly by!

Before the race, I decided to wear my Garmin on my left wrist and my Timex on my right. I set the Timex for the 8:2 run:walk interval if we decided to do the full. At one point close to the split where the half marathoners went left, Nate asked me if I ever DNF'd anything. I said no. He then said, "cream rises to the right" and with that, we were on the second half of the course. I set the intervals and we started up the 8 run:2 walk. I continued with eating GU every 3 miles and it was working perfectly. The nice thing about getting to mile 16 is that you can usually remember somewhere in your training where you've had a kick ass 10 miler, 10k, 5 miler, 5k, etc. You remember how effortless you felt and it carries you. Around mile 19, it started to drizzle and we laughed that it was around that point where I caught up to Nate in the rain in Placid. By mile 20 it was now raining. We turned right onto Rt. 17 and both of us were doing math to see if breaking 5 hours was a possibility. Despite the lack of training, the rain or the distance, we were still laughing and having fun. We agreed that somewhere in mile 25 would be our last walk interval. We ran the chute and crossed the finish line smiling that we crossed South Carolina off the list.

Sometime after meeting up with Heidi and Brad, Heidi thanked me for running with Nate. I told her that I needed him as much as he needed me. Not sure I would have 1) run the full or 2) done as well (for me) as I did. And I don't regret it for a second. It's quite amazing what you can convince your body to do. I think Tim has a quote on the top of his blog something along the lines of, "the body can do anything, it's the mind that needs convincing".

Actually train to run the distance.

It was cold and rainy when we finished. We grabbed some food and contemplated getting massages. We bagged that idea and opted to walk back to the car to get warm clothes. We then returned to the finish area to find Heidi and Nate, who did great!


Again, training. I don't think I could have asked for a better day, given my last few months of running.


Pros: schwag was good (tech shirt, towel, sling bag), course was flat, lots of really nice volunteers,

Cons: Post race food (there was nothing hot to eat), post race party at House of Blues (good idea...bad execution)