We knew this race would be epic. I mean, who signs up for a full marathon in August in Southern Indiana? Morons. That's who. Oh wait that's me.... moving on.
How is it on race day, I was still in disbelief that I was running a full marathon? My last marathon was a crap race, to say the least. And I had just had so much fun training for this race. It seemed weird to think that a marathon could feel this different. but my nerves put me in check. I was nervous. I was freaked out. I just wanted to START RUNNING! And then we did that.
This course was gonna be rough on my head. Because it was an out and back... half marathon... that you did twice. And then there were these patches of road/asphalt that I wasn't ready for. They hurt. My feet have been mostly on trails for this training. Not ready for asphalt. There was a one mile stretch that was not fun right on a lake causeway that was yuck on the first run out, but we spotted two dead raccoons, so that passed the time, I suppose. More running... blah blah blah, a sucky gravel part, back over the causeway, back to the start. Because oh yeah, we had to do it all again.
That's when things got interesting.
My wonderful training partner and I had the same thinking... get over the causeway, get through the gravel, causeway won't be so bad on the last pass. Let's get this thing done! Good plan.
-We got to the causeway and I said, "ok, we'll run to the bridge". No sweat. But then we needed a new goal. "OK, next we'll run to the second dead raccoon". Who says that? I do. Turns out that second dead raccoon felt much farther away then the first two times through. But it got us across.
blah blah blah... more running. Wait, was that thunder? Nah, we're just close to the airport. No, that was thunder. Well this could get interesting. So there we were at mile 21 (or was it 22?), back to the stupid causeway. We both knew that super exposed causeway was not the place to be during a thunder storm but what do you do? So we started running. Running is a relative term at this point. It was a jog/ shuffle/lumber. Then we saw the wall of rain coming at us and the lightening. And we ran as fast as we could. I had to cover my ear to prevent the tiny hail from flying into it, but we just kept running as hard as we could to get to cover in the woods. All of my everything hurt, but I kept thinking that being struck by lightening would probably hurt more. Thankfully it blew over quickly and we weren't struck by lightening. And when the adrenaline wore off we realized we were hurting. But what do you do? You keep going.
Then we heard a noise. And my friend asks me if I said something. I didn't. That noise was someone enjoying the sex they were having in the woods. Really? You picked marathon day to have sex in the woods? That's your thing? I'm just happy I didn't get visual confirmation.
More running. Power arch for stranger that was slightly terrified of us. More running.
Wait. I walk back a few steps. Is that underwear? Did someone remove their underwear on the race course? Is that normal? Who the f does that? This race just took a quick turn to crazy. We need to be done.
And then we were. It didn't feel like a marathon. I think that's a good thing, because I'm doing another full marathon in about two months.
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