White Rock Marathon...aka HELL

Holy crap.  It's been forever.

Five second catchup.

My last workout of any kind before yesterday was three weeks ago.  Talia and I ran the Fort Worth Marathon 20 miler.  It sucked so horribly bad.  Hot.  Boring.  Lonely.

The three weeks prior to the race consisted of a lot of sitting on my butt.  Drinking a lot of wine.  Eating a lot of food.  A spectacular trip to Northern California.  Lots of greatness, just not necessarily marathon training greatness.

Fast forward to yesterday.  Talia and I registered for the White Rock Marathon while still on our Chicago marathon high.  That high was loooong gone.

We have been in a severe drought for months.  That is until this weekend.  The monsoons arrived.  We almost had to take an ark to the race.  Instead we took the train.

A little lonely without our other bitches, and questioning our own sanity.

The high temp for yesterday was 42ish.  The low was in the 30's.  The wind was windy.  The rain was constant.  Well that's a lie.

It wasn't raining as we stood in the line for the start of the race.  It began about 21 seconds after we crossed the start mat.

We accessorized nicely with these lovely trash bags.  Talia wore hers for half the dang race.  I ditched mine pretty early on.

It was go time.  I was still in denial about what was about to go down.

About 25,000 people were expected.  6000 marathoners, 13,000 half marathoners and the rest were doing the marathon relay.  I think about 4500 ended up finishing the marathon.  I think the other 1500 were carried away with hypothermia.  It was seriously miserable!

Talia and I hung out together for the first 6 or 7 miles.  I forgot my Garmin.  I had no music.  The mile signs were either non existing or destroyed due to the weather.  I saw mile marker one and the next one I noticed was nine.  I was truly running blindly.

Talia kept trying to stay with me.  I finally told her I was going to kick her ass if I found her waiting on me one more time.  I knew I was going to suck butt and did not want to drag her down with me!

The rain went to a drizzle for about 30 seconds around mile 18.  Just long enough for me to take this spectacular picture and text to a few people to let them know I was still alive.

Around mile 10 I thought about walking.  I knew if I did I would never finish.  And by walking I mean constantly.  I did walk through every water stop, but ran everything else.  I counted my left foot strikes from 1 to 100.  I tried to go to 101, 102, but decided that was way to difficult.  So, for 16  miles I just kept counting 1 to 100.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Somehow it worked.

Holy crap.  And then a freaking angel fell out of the sky!

With about .5 miles to go Randee comes out of no where to run me in.  What a surprise and just about the greatest thing anyone could have ever done!  She did the same for Talia.  She went from Uber Bitch to Angel instantly!

Hardest earned medal EVER!

The race organizers did a great job.  The volunteers who stood in the cold for hours for the hydration stations were beyond amazing, and have much bigger hearts than I do!  The fans who came out were such a nice distraction.

It was definitely a day to remember and a day to find out what you're really made of!  My time was a tad faster than Chicago, but still not what I was hoping for.  I'm sure I'll give the marathon a go again...but not for a good long while!