How was the race? Fantastic!

As you know, I raised money for and trained with the American Stroke Association's Train to End Stroke (TTES) program. The shuttle took us from the hotel to the race starting line and we arrived around 6:15. Start time wasn't until 7:40. There are so many runners (almost 30,000), so they organize us into corrals (mooooo!) based on our estimated finish time. I was in corral 9 with several of my fellow TTES'ers, so we stuck together after we got off the bus. We ran a 10-minute warmup and did our stretching, then checked our gear bags onto a UPS van to be delivered to the finish line, which was in Tempe (start was in Phoenix).

The weather was perfect. In the low 50’s at the start and the high that day was 62…I couldn’t have asked for a better day to run! The sky was clear and the scenery along some parts of the course was beautiful…mountain ranges against a crisp blue sky. If I wasn’t already out of breath, it would have taken my breath away.

So, back to the race…we headed to our corral about 7:00 and just stood there. Since we were running with TTES, we had on the official TTES "singlet" and there were lots of other TTES'ers in our corral. It was neat to talk to them about how their group trained and what got them involved in TTES. A few minutes before the start, we were addressed by the mayor of Phoenix and Senator John McCain (his wife ran with TTES). The Star-Spangled Banner was sung and then we were off...

...well, "off" isn't the best description. There were LOTS of us, so it was more like we just stood there for a while longer, then, after a few minutes, we were off. I crossed the start line four minutes after the official race start. I don’t think that I was ever really nervous. Or maybe I was and I just didn’t let myself think about it. At any rate, I felt fine as we got started.

The first few miles were pretty crowded with runners and we were in downtown Phoenix, so there weren't that many spectators. I had my GPS watch on, so I was watching our pace and we were running our planned pace of 11:00 (that's eleven minutes per mile). Our pattern was to run two miles, walk a half mile. We kept up that pattern through mile fifteen, which is great!

There wasn't much excitement to speak of at the beginning. As we got into the race, there were lots of people cheering for us, and band and cheer squads along the route to break up the monotony. I had written my name on my singlet, so people would cheer my name, which was really motivating!

There is a huge flag at every mile marker with just the mileage number on it. Those are the best things you'll ever see when you're running to get to them. They were huge, so you could see them from a ways off. My training partner, Barb, saw them first at every mile and then I would start looking. At the 10K point (6.2 miles), there was a sign, and I thought "There are twenty more miles to go. TWENTY MORE MILES!!!!!" But it didn't stop me.

We made it the half marathon marker in just over two-and-a-half hours, only a little bit longer than it took me to finish the half marathon last year, so I felt great about our time. Then, I started to get tired. You know, if you let yourself think about it, you start thinking things like “Fifteen miles really seems long enough...can't we just stop now?” But, I didn't want to voice those thoughts to Barb. I was thinking it would discourage her. So, we just kept going.

At mile 18, our Coach met us and brought us food. It was the best food I've ever eaten. There were people along the course for most of the second half of the race that were handing us food, which was great! You don't realize that you need food until you start to eat it and then it is sooo good. I haven’t taken that much food from strangers since I went trick-or-treating as a kid!

At mile 23, we caught up with a guy who was running for Team in Training, which supports the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He was struggling a little bit and his Team in Training coach was talking to him. On the back of his shirt, it said “I Miss You, Lucy.” I just about lost it. Barb said, “Don’t start crying.” I responded, “I am beyond emotional control, now!” Which was totally true. However, I guess my body didn’t have any tears to spare because I didn’t cry.

Just before mile 24, there was a water station where people were spraying the runners with water. It wasn’t hot or anything, but, man, that felt great! I looked pretty pitiful…I was kind of begging the kids to spray me…anything to help me through the last few miles.

Once we got to mile 25, I was thinking, “I’m really going to finish this…that’s insane.” We ran the last ¾ of a mile and crossed the finish line in 5 hours, 37 minutes, 27 seconds. We met our teammates, stretched (VERY IMPORTANT), then got back on the bus to the hotel.

At that point in time, I would have sworn to you that I’ll never do another full marathon. But, the further away from the race I get, the more I think, “Well, maybe just one more…to improve my time.” We’ll see…

Thanks for your support and for taking the time to read about my race!