My one friend was trying BQ so she took off like a rocket. The other friend and I hadn't done a road marathon before and didn't know how to pace or what to expect of the day, so we decided to go around together until one or the other felt the need to push it or drop it. We hadn't trained together and hadn't really spent time in each other's solitary company so it was nice chatting and getting to know her. We both wore an outer jacket the first 3 miles but warmed up and were able to ditch the jacket at our aid station. Amazingly we kept at a consistent 10 mile pace through about 20 miles which was the best that I could hope for the day. I took a sip of water nearly each time I passed the table. I was able to down two gels, pretzels, a fig newton, oranges and various candy throughout the day. A little stomach queasiness occured in the later stages of the race, but it wasn't too bad. Between miles 20-21 I started feeling fatigue and took a little extra time at the aid station - downing some flat coke. I realized I wouldn't have the energy to catch back up with my friend and she ended up finishing 6 minutes ahead of me. Miles 21-23 were a struggle and I was kicking myself for only doing 20.2 as my long run in training. I'd followed Hal Higdon's intermediate training plan except scaled it back to 4 runs instead of 5 in a week. I had to give myself an attitude adjustment -deciding to either finish this thing miserable or finish it happy. Realizing that my best-case scenario of finishing in 4:30 was well within reach even if I walked the last miles (and I WANTED to), I told my whimpy self to get lost and I was able to finish at a slower pace, but finish happy.

During the race I mentally asked myself the same question, thinking there's some magical formula I missed in training that would get me through the event faster/happier (such as running 26.2 in training so that my body wouldn't feel fatigue at 20 - ha, yeah, right!) Afterward, though, I realized I did what I could and made the most of the time I was given and I'm happy with that.

Hugged my two friends (the one DID BQ so that was great news), chugged down a big cup of chocolate milk but couldn't stomach anything else. Chatted and stretched for a little while, but then grabbed our stuff, changed and headed home.

My hubby and kids came out to greet me when we pulled up in the car and when I got inside they'd gotten me a beautiful bouquet of daisies. Who could't count the day as wonderful to be surrounded by such love! :)


Inexperience at this distance, both in training and racing.


This is an awesome race set-up and one that I highly recommend. It's a "litter-free" race where the participants bring your own water bottles and set up your own aid station. You pass by your stuff 26 times and are able to take off layers and grab items easily. Along with the traditional race number bib for your front, we were given race bibs with our name and city/state for your back so that when you were passed or passed by someone you could call eachother by name and be an encourgement. That's the heart of this race and I loved that. I was amazed that even though they limit it to about 100 marathoners and 20 relay teams, there were so many people from all over the country. Ron, from here on BT, passed me by so many times that I lost count, but it was so fun being able to give him a shout out each time. The volunteers were enthusiastic the whole day. They have two large screens with your time, name, bib number and number of laps completed each time you passed by the start/finish so you didn't have to track that yourself. It was just an awesome event all around and one I'm glad I chose for my first (and maybe last) road marathon. :)