I ran a marathon yesterday. No big deal.
It was hard, I’m not going to lie. And it didn’t go quite how I’d expected. But I’m happy with my experience and I’m glad I did it.
I really thought I could finish in 5 hours. My training had gone really well and I used a bunch of different online calculators to see what they projected my finish time would be using current training times. Depending on what times I entered, the projected times were around 5:10 or so. I thought I could push it a bit and hit 5 hours.
I told people I was hoping to finish in 5:30 or sometimes I just didn’t even talk about finish times but in my heart I was hoping for 5 hours. I am not disappointed with my time, not really. It took a full hour longer than I wanted it to but I don’t think I could have done anything to change that, at least not yesterday. And I have some ideas about how things are for the next marathon, if I decide to do another one.
Yesterday was amazing and the first half was incredible. I felt fast and strong and I enjoyed it so much. The second half was much harder. I think I knew it would be harder, I just didn’t know how much. This race included a half marathon and the half marathoners split off the course at about mile 11. That split was incredibly hard. Knowing that they were almost done and that I still had so far to go was really difficult. And then the marathon course entered a really boring and lonely section so that made it doubly difficult.
I think I just have to prepare more for the mentally challenging middle section next time. Miles 10-20 were so hard and I really think that was more about my mind than about my body. I have other thoughts and other places I think I can improve but for today, I’m a marathoner. It was awesome in so many ways. I did it! And that’s enough.
And I am the Mother of a Marathoner! The PROUD mother, I might add! 🙂