This was the first marathon I've ever run all by myself. Kinda felt odd not to have friends with me, but good to know I wasn't slowing anyone down.

I wanted to make sure to enjoy the race, all the sites and the people. I haven't really done that before and since I probably wasn't going to PR, I thought I might as well enjoy myself!

The bridge to Canada kicked my tail. Not only the incline, but I'm fearful of bridges so having to run across one made my HR soar! I knew we wouldn't be in Canada long, and I had friends to cheer for me outside of the tunnel, so I just focused on getting back to the USA! The different townships throughout the course were awesome. Mexican town, Indian Village, and the others were so friendly and people were out cheering. Very cool!

The wind was ridiculous and I was more than ready for it to stop. The last 6 miles back into town were all into the wind and really challenging. My foot was killing me when I walked, my hip was killing me when I ran. I was not going to stop, but I sure wasn't liking the limitations. Rick had a diet pepsi for me at mile 19, which tasted like pure heaven! Coincidentally, mile 20 was my best mile of the entire day!! Had to be the pepsi!

I circled back around thru to the finish line, got my medal, my sack of pathetic post race food, found Rick and hobbled to the car.

Not a thing!

medal, car, nap


my fat tail


The course was nice, but there was NO food on course, only water/gatorade and one gu station. Post race food was a bagel, apple, and water. Pretty pathetic from that aspect.

Volunteers were great and there were BIG, major roads blocked off with tons of police to monitor traffic.