January 2005. Hello!

Michael and I are back from our ˝ Marathon and I wanted to write to tell you all about it, in case you might be inspired to set a worthy goal for yourself this year!

First of all let me tell you that it is hard to schedule and get to something across the country. I had to inconvenience many clients by making schedule changes, purchase and set up a laptop PC with a wireless card--only to discover that it wouldn’t connect to the hotel network (even with their tech support working on it), fly 3-4 hours, and have all of the work you left behind staring at you when you return.

Was it worth it? My goodness, “yes!” I cannot believe how enjoyable and exciting the event was, and how beautiful the day. When we touched down in Phoenix, AZ we were told that they were experiencing colder than normal weather and more rain than ever. As the days passed the weather forecast for the event grew ever more dreary. We were told to expect 55 degrees and rain – all day. In fact they were expecting so much rain (which would also mean tons of snow in the mountains and outlying areas) that it began to look like we might not get back home in time.

Inside I was secretly telling myself that I didn’t fly ˝ way across the country to run 13 miles in the bone-chilling rain. I wasn’t going to do it and wasn’t going to feel badly about it. I was there for an enjoyable long run/workout, not there for torture. BUT, as grace would have it, as the sun came up while we were being shuttled from the finish line to the start line at 6am, we could see a glorious sun rise and plenty of sky! The rain, at least, might hold off for a bit.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We set our clock for 4:30 am because we had to meet a shuttle at the finish line where our car was parked, along with 30,000 other runners! Prior to checking out of the hotel I melted my last piece of string cheese inside of an English Muffin and had some coffee. I wasn’t sure if we would be fed before the race, so I packed an apple and some water in my jacket pocket, and gave Michael one of his protein pancakes which travel so well.

Then we left for the shuttles. I imagined it was going to be immensely confusing and frustrating, but we no sooner parked our rental car, then we were in line for a shuttle and on a moving bus – all within 10 minutes of parking. The organizers were amazing in setting this event up. They had planned well for the movement of tens of thousands of people – so far, so good.

Then the bus let us out at a long line of porta-potties and we made use of them. We were dressed for warm weather—myself in shorts and Michael without a jacket and we were quite cold. Plus we still weren’t sure if it would rain or not. So after the quick break we followed the throng of people to what we expected would be the race area. We ended up in a well-lit block which had free coffee, tea, water, poweraid, bagels and bananas everywhere and we helped ourselves to the hot coffee—what a blessing it was in the cold of the morning, and a bagel. I saved a banana for just before the start so that my blood stream would have the potassium and sugar in it when I needed it. Then the sun came up and we saw nothing but blue sky!! We were going to have beautiful weather!! I started getting excited at that time. We were going to have a great day!

So, it came time for the Marathon to start and we went to the start line to see it get going. There were rail-thin Ethiopians and other elite runners at the start who we knew would finish their marathon before we finished our half. They looked amazing. And Senator McKain was there to send them off, and we put our hands to our hearts for the American Anthem. I’ve never been involved in an event where the anthem was sung and it moved me to tears. I was growing more excited than ever. Then the gun went off and the runners and walkers set about their journey. I admired them. And I was glad I wasn’t one of them. I can’t yet get excited about running 26+ miles. 13 is doable, but 26?

So it was time for us to go get into our corrals. A corral is an area in the start area where ~1,000 participants are gathered. They are numbered from the start line like 1, 2, 3, etc, with 1 holding the supposed fastest runners and 10 holding slower runners than 8, etc. We had about 20 corrals on our side and we were assigned to corral 6 because our anticipated finish time was 2 hours. The morning was completely bright and sunny at this point and we were all warming up—bodily and with the anticipation of the start of the race—and then the gun went off!

It takes some time to actually get from your corral to the start line, and all of us had on electronic chips which activate our start time as we finish the start line so that the time spent getting to the start line isn’t counted against you. And it took my corral about 3 minutes to cross the line—which we basically walked because there were so many people it wasn’t possible to run.

Our 1st 4-5 miles were spent jockeying for position as we had to duck and weave in-between slower runners to get to where we could run at our good pace, and that was fun like a game which took our minds off of the effort of it, and I felt very strong. I passed countless thousands of runners with Michael by my side and we were happy and smiling and singing with the bands as we passed them. And everyone was so nice. Nobody trampled anybody else, and I can’t tell you how many times I heard “excuse me.” Athletes are exceptional people in so many ways.

And…we ran well – very well. I had my fuel belt on with 6 flasks of Accelerade, and I planned to drink one at the hour mark, 90 minutes and 60 minutes, thinking we may run it in, actually, 2 hours and 15 minutes or so given 10 minute miles, which would have been great.

But as my time was clocked at the 5K and 10K points, I realized I could possibly finish in 2 hours. I was so excited to continue passing people. I felt so strong and was amazed at myself. The course was flat, there was no wind, a slight humidity (not too dry), and warm sunshine – probably 60 degrees. The course was perfect and I was taking advantage of it.

At about the 8th mile Michael really started to fail and he told me it was okay for me to go on ahead. As we got further and further into it, it certainly was harder and harder to continue. My feet began to hurt pretty badly and my legs began to feel very heavy, but each flask of Accelerade made me feel gazelle-like again. God bless it. I can’t believe how magical it is and couldn’t imagine any long run without it.

At mile 12 I realized it was almost over and the course began getting thinner and thinner in order to corral us all into the finish line. The crowds got dense and loud speakers began blaring encouragements as the crowd cheered and waved us onward. It was so exciting. Once I saw the finish line I looked over at a girl next to me and said, “Let’s GO!” and we began to sprint and ran hard across the finish line. The clock said 2:11:23. I had run it in under 10 minute miles and couldn’t have been prouder or more excited.

I pulled over and waited to see my dogged husband cross at 2:14:31. He looked exhausted but as soon as he got to me he said, “Honey that was amazing!! We’re doing this again next year.” It was so hard for him and yet he wanted to do it again. I cannot tell you what a sense of accomplishment this brings to the finisher. It truly is something to experience.

Later that day I looked up the race results and was very surprised to see that although 29,000 runners had registered only about 2/3 actually finished. And I was very surprised to find that I had finished 2062 out of 9993 women, 361 out of 1553 women aged 34-39 and 4714 out of 15,484 total half-marathon runners. My husband had some pretty fantastic numbers, too. Will we try a full marathon in the future? That just depends on how much time we find to train for it (or not). Where 13.1 miles is a relatively easy long run for us, 26.2 is something we would have to train hard for. Only time will tell. But one thing I can tell you is that we plan to go back to Phoenix next January and hope to see some of you there with us!

For complete information, including race results, visit the site: http://rnraz.com/