Our First Marathon

We made it! Looking back today (we finished just a little over 24 hours ago from when I am writing this) there were many many times where I wondered if I would. It was fairly grueling. The first half was pretty comfortable for me. At about mile 13, I started to notice my legs getting tired and sore. By about mile 17 I could have stopped and been ok with it. Around mile 19 or 20 I was almost to the point of tears, but then I started almost hyperventilating, and that with running isn't a great combination (my throat got very small), so I had to chill so I could breathe. I wanted to stop so many times. Everything hurt. Probably the one thing I told myself that kept me going was: "If you stop now, it's still going to hurt, and you're going to have to walk all the way back. At least if you run, you'll get there sooner!" The last few miles felt like they were never going to end - each step seemed to hurt more and more. With about a quarter mile left Narasimha grabbed my hand and pretty much literally pulled me over the finish line. Somehow I beat him by 1 second (it was "chip" timing, so he probably technically started a little before me or something).

When we were done, all I wanted to do was sit down - after all, I had been looking forward to that for about 9 miles! But, Narasimha was pumped. Some kind of runner's high or something. He was walking around, eating everything, talking to all these people we knew and didn't. It was pretty funny. He's already talking about doing another one.

I know we could do better - we did not train as well as we could have. In the last 6 weeks of our training schedule, we missed over 100 miles of running, and that was out of only 270 miles. Which is too much to miss if you want to be consistent. So, all of that considered, I think we did pretty well. Our time was 4:02:42. That's an average of 9:16 minutes/mile. Our first 13 miles were under 9:00 pace, and then until mile 21 we were under 10:00 pace, but from mile 22 until the end our pace was over 10:00 - as you can see, we just slowly ran out of juice. But, we finished, and we never walked (we knew if we stopped to walk, even for a bit, we'd have not been able to convince our legs to run again!), and I think we did the best we could :)

Thanks to everyone who offered encouraging words during training or before the race - you are appreciated!

Just a few minutes before the start.

This was a little before the half-way mark - mile 13 was just a little after this.

Almost there - Narasimha has my hand and is determined that I will finish with just about a block or so to go!

Done - just by a few minutes, and talking to my mom and sisters.

Some of our cheering squad - my mom (middle) and sisters. Some of our friends from Narasimha's work also came to cheer for us, and then some friends from around my parent's house were there as well.