Slogging through to the end!

 Ran the marathon on Saturday - it was a crazy adventure. There was a huge rainstorm on Friday night which made the trail incredibly muddy - I felt like I was on one of the silly game shows like floor is lava because the mud was really just comical in how much of it there was and trying to run through it. People around me were slipping and sliding and nearly getting shoes sucked off and just getting ankle deep in mud left and right. At some point you just had to laugh because what else were you going to do?!

And then there were the stream crossings - I knew they said there would be 1-2 of them with the water being high after the storm, but there were probably 8-10 of them in total, one where I stepped in and the water was up over knee high.....needless to say my feet were soaked for 6+ hours which looked pretty knarly when I finally got my shoes and socks off.

Nonetheless, it was a ton of fun. I was nervous at the start but mostly similar to how I start out my long runs, but I felt good getting going and the first uphill I was pretty squarely in the middle of the pack where it was mostly walking uphill, which was good for getting warm. Once we got all the way up that first stretch was when the mud really hit, and then people were just going at various speeds trying to keep on their feet. The first 7-8 miles passed pretty quickly and I was happy with my pace, but then from there to mile 13 it felt like such a repetitive cycle of climbing up just to go back down to lake level and just slogging through. I think that was the hardest stretch for me up to the 13 miles, just knowing that I still had more than half to go. Once I got to that aid station at mile 13 I got some food and spent a few minutes stretching which was nice. Then set off again, and reached miles 15/16 pretty quickly - once I got to mile 15 I had in my mind that I had 10 to go, and I can grind through 10 on a bad day. My legs were starting to feel heavy at that point, and I had the idea to pop some of the advil I had in my pack - this made a huge difference taking the edge of for the next stretch.

There were 3-4 miles that were pretty nice, a bit more open meadow than the lakeside trail had been and a welcome change of pace. But I knew that the huge hill at mile 21 was coming, and just braced myself to keep going, even at a slow pace to make it up that thing. I somewhat mistakenly thought that after the big final hill it was mostly downhill, only to get the rude awakening that there were still some uphill stretches along with the most technical and rocky section of trail to go. That mile 23-25 stretch was tough. Legs were done, then got out of the trail to run some along the road with it raining, cold, and the wind blowing in my face. I was so ready to be done.

But, all in all I feel like I didn't have any super low moments during the race, I had times where I was tired but it felt like it would on a training run. And the extra 5 miles didn't seem so bad, I was tired at the end but certainly didn't feel terrible. And I did my usual protein shake, got a post race pizza which was delicious, and then went back to the hotel to rest and hydrate before dinner.

I told Jacob that I was amazed that only in early February I had run the half and really couldn't imagine doing double that mileage for a race, it's a little mind boggling to me to see how far I came being comfortable with long (over 13 miles) distances in just over 2 months of training.

Honestly, I loved doing the training and the race. I have a feeling there will be quite a few more to come!