OK, I’ll stop talking about the Marathon now.

I couldn’t have done it at all if it weren’t for my sister-in-law, Molly, and our neighbor Glen who ran the half marathon. We trained together all summer. Long 9 milers in the hot sun with no water, and easy 14 milers where it felt silly to stop because we felt we could go on forever. Molly and I share a natural pace so we could chat and chat while we ran. Unfortunately, she is a much more experienced (and younger!) runner than me and I’m afraid I held her back at the end. She still had more in her and wanted to pick it up, which we did a little, but I know she had more in her.

The good news is that she still got 3rd(!!!!) in her division and won $500. I am so proud of her! I was 70th in mine. 70th out of 119. Not nearly as impressive.

It was so awesome. Every time that I thought I was getting so tired I was crazy we’d pass another mile marker and I’d feel the relief of knowing I only had 9 miles, or 7 miles, and then 4, 3, and 2 miles till the end.

By one mile left I was unable to talk, not because I was too breathless, but because I needed all my mental energies to keep going. Rob and a good friend, Megan both had the great idea of meeting us a mile out from the finish and ran with us into Downtown. We couldn’t have done so well without them, it’s almost like they brought us fresh legs, almost…

Then we ran into the stadium and the finish and finally stopped. It was a lot like labor and birth, the labor is riveting and exhausting, and the celebration of achievement is much quieter.

Today I feel like a cement truck poured concrete into my bones. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to apologize to my family for the Beast I’m being to them.

Well, there are only 2 days left. TWO DAYS LEFT!!!! On Saturday morning, before the sun rises I will be up and ready to run twenty-six point two miles. It will take me at least 4 hours and 30 minutes. I have done all I can do to prepare. I had to start resting up this week, no more running after Tuesday. And then the waiting begun. This is probably one of the longest weeks of my life.

I take it back, though, that there is nothing I can do left to prepare. I can eat things. Lots of things. Carbohydrates. Today was supposed to be the big stuff-your-face day. I ate french toast, 4 bagels, pretzels, pasta salad and ice cream. I don’t think I could eat anything else if you paid me. Now I just have to drink an ocean of water to be super hydrated and then I’ll have done everything I can to prepare.

Just for fun, here is a link to the photo from my last road race. That was just a 7.6 mile leg of the 5 person Marathon Relay last September. It was the official beginning of my obsession with completing my own marathon. An hour before that picture was shot I had decided to run the full Marathon this year. And here I am. It feels almost as significant as giving birth.

Rob calls this a “child abuse picture” because of the bruise on her head. The poor thing fell down the church stairs on Tuesday night. She told me, “I cried. I fell down stairs. I hurt head.” Very concise. Strunk and White would be proud.

We were all out enjoying the raspberry bush a couple of days ago and I was snapping pictures. Before I realised that the white balance was off I had 5 or 6 shots. This was one of them. Actually, this is what I did to one of them in Photoshop. I could almost be an artist!

Every morning I check my email after breakfast. Usually the girls are done too, but not always. On mornings when I get particularly high amounts of email things like this happen:

Akron Marathon Course Video

I am SO excited. I’ll be running with Rob’s sister Molly, and my neighbor who trained with me last summer is going to be running the Half Marathon. We’ve overcome injuries, lack of sleep, Molly’s gone off to college, and we’re so ready to finally beat the 26.2 miles that have spent the year haunting us.

Wish us luck!

I was supposed to run 8 miles this morning, but Elise is on a sleeping strike so I woke up moments before Rob had to leave for work. This obviously left no time for me to squeeze in even a shortened run. So instead, I decided to load up the bike trailer and my bike and take the girls on a long nap-time bike ride.

When ever I do my city errands on the bike I’m shouting back to Elise not to drift off between stops so I was certain it would take no time for her to zonk and I would get a good 90 minutes of biking on the trails before Olivia got bored. Well, I was so wrong. SOOOOOO wrong.

Elise didn’t fall asleep until after we had gone about 10 miles and she had cried for the last 3 of them. I kept thinking, “just a little farther and she’ll be out.” But no. I had promised Olivia that we’d see this long tunnel before we turned around, but there was no way I would have made it the next 3 miles before Elise totally freaked out so we headed home, defeated.

I kid you not, a mile and a half after I turned back for home Elise fell asleep, so I asked Liv if she still wanted to see the tunnel. “Yes!” she said, and so I turned around yet again.

We didn’t even make it back to the point where we turned around the first time and now Olivia was telling me that she wanted to go home because she was tired. AAHHHHH! Olivia’s beseaching me to turn around woke Elise back up leaving us with 10 miles of screaming until we could get back to the car.

To make matters worse, I had to stop the bike about every 5 minutes or so because Elise would pull Olivia’s hair in her anger, or Olivia would steal Elise’s water bottle. Or who knows what else they managed to think of to make me have to stop. At one point I was walking down the trail holding a sobbing Elise, walking my bike, which was dragging the empty trailer and being followed by a sobbing Olivia.

What had been carefully planned to take only 90 minutes turned into 3 hours of riding around like a spectacle. I was pitied, glared at, gawked at, and only once did anyone offer to help me. Not like there was anything anyone could have done.

The only thing that I could say I liked about that whole ordeal was when we passed 3 pregnant moms and their spouses riding on bikes in the opposite direction and I could see the look of horror on all of their faces as they thought, “OH! What are we getting ourselves into?!” Other than that I almost swore off biking for life. If the trailer hadn’t cost $250 I might have.