Marathon Recap: from "Unspeakably Awful" to Psyched for the Next One

So the Paris Marathon has come and gone and what can I tell you about it?

I didn't train enough, or have a real race plan. Or know if I could actually finish it.

Until I finished it.

It was tough. Way tougher than the tri team made it sound! I often remind myself that I'm very fit for an ordinary person, although very unfit compared to my tri teammate super athletes. I also have to remind myself that what they make sound easy (like running your first marathon in 4 hours), will not actually be easy or even remotely attainable for me! They all did it in around 3 hours, which is really smoking fast. It took me almost twice as long.

I started out too fast, and I alternatingly ran and walked the last 10K, like everyone says you will. I just didn't feel very confident at the start of the race and after about a month of not doing any long runs over like 14 miles (pretty poor training and not even enough of those), I'd kind of gotten out of the habit of taking shot bloks and my stomach get violently upset on race day. Probably a combination of nerves and fake sports food...

My time was over 5 hours (5:21 to be completely honest), which is slower than I thought it would be, but I foolishly didn't realise just how hard it was to run a marathon. Until you've done it, I don't think you can imagine how you can be tired to the point that it can ever take you like 45 minutes or even more to run 5K (I usually do it in 27 min and just assumed that I could do every 5K split at that pace). The important thing is that now I know I can do the distance and also that the key is just to keep running (NO walk breaks), no matter how slowly. Knowing what doing one is actually like will help me train better for the next one (Nice-Cannes in November).

You're really a zombie afterwards and you can barely walk, or go down stairs or even eat. I had no real appetite the rest of the day. After I crossed the finish line, when I had to walk over to stand in line to get my medal, I realised I was limping. A woman turned to me and said, "God, that was terrible." I replied, "I know, unspeakably awful." I asked if she were a first time marathoner and she said yes. We commiserated together a little. I remembered back to seeing my mom and my friend Pamela cheering for me during the race around km 29 or 30 and when Pam asked, "how do you feel?" I said, "oh, pretty terrible" and she said, "that's how you're supposed to feel when you run a marathon!"

The highlights were seeing then during the race, I also saw my friend Sharon looking strong at the end and our friend Freda was there cheering for us, which was a huge boost. Finally, I used what little energy I had left to run across the finish line at a blistering 10 min/mile pace (which seemed like the equivalent of 7-min miles considering how tired I was!)

The absolute highlight was seeing my mom and Pam at the finish and then while I was looking for them in the crowd, I ran into Evelyn, who had also come to congratulate me! We ate some maracroons in the sun, courtesy of Ironman boyfriend (who was going crazy worrying about me since I was taking so long) and the girls and my mom were so positive and so proud of me that that was when I stopped feeling disappointed about running so slowly and going from competitive running goals to basic survival and started feeling proud that I HAD survived and had run a marathon! I decided that your first marathon is about getting round and not giving up and even just doing one is a huge life 'moment fort' (French for defining moment) and big event to check off the bucket list. While I've run a marathon, running a fast one, or at least one that I feel like I trained well for, is still on the list... But I'll have my chance in November.

This one, the second marathon can be about running fast, meeting a time goal, training well and most importantly, going into the race with confidence.