Marine Corps 2010 - real quick.

Everything you ever wanted to know about yourself you can learn in 26.2 miles

oh how true is that statement. marine corps. marine corps. marine corps. what a total experience. if you know anything about me you know that i was totally freaked out by the 14th street bridge, keeping my 14:00 pace to ensure that i would cross said bridge/getting there by 1:15 pm so I could get across it, and just the whole thing in general.  I think I looked at the marathon's webpage 54 million times to read about the bridge and what time it would be cut off. I even wrote the cut off time on my hand {and that i had to be at the bridge by 4:45}.  I knew I had to do at least 5 miles per hour.  When i signed up for marine corps I told myself that this was it. i was going to do this one right. i was going to train hard. put in the crazy miles and pretty much rock the race as best as i could. ...then life happened, my job got busy, and i found it almost impossible some days to even get in miles. at times during training i questioned if i should actually do it or if i could do it. i started tracking my runs against my garmin to see how many miles i was beating my mcm bridge competition by. ...i just wanted to give myself some confidence going in and by competing with my garmin i gave myself some much needed confidence...

i will say that when boarding the plane on Thursday i told myself that i just had to trust what training i had done and be confident that i would cross both the starting line, the bridge, get up the hills, and cross the finish line. there was no point in second guessing myself. i just had to enjoy the time with my family and then the time spent on my feet running around DC.

i am not ready to do the race recap yet. i am gonna do it. give me a few days. let me wrap my head around it. but i do want to say that i am a SECOND TIME MARATHONER and i PR'd by 12 minutes and through it all I had a pretty great time.

i had mentioned a few months back that i was once told to dedicate the last 6.2 miles to someone. and i so badly wanted to do that but the last 6.2 miles were so brutal and took everything in me to just keep going. {my slowest miles were in the last 10k} and i couldn't think of anything but one foot in front of the other, don't cry it will only get your heart rate up, there will be a turn around, just keep going.

after 26.44 miles {hi, mcm your course ran LONG} and being called ma'am about 5 million times and getting crazy sunburned i finished in 5:41 which is a 12 minute PR! and then trekked to find my bag and my parents.

I feel like the marathon is a test of patience, endurance, will to succeed, determination, and perseverance.  You have to be able to push the "can't do its" to the side and tell yourself "i can i can". It is telling yourself that yes this hurts but it is a good kind of hurt. A marathon takes a strong, determined, focused, person.  I am so so proud of every person that stood at the starting line and everyone who crossed the finish line.