Memory Monday

I enjoyed participating in Memory Monday so much last week that I decided to do it again this week. Maybe I'll keep doing it... :)

Last week I talked about my skating, which was a huge part of my life, and really, the only sport I ever participated in. After I quit skating, I felt I needed to come up with something to do with myself...I'd been active all my life, training for upwards of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I'm extremely competitive...so I needed something.

One day, while sitting in my dorm room freshman year, my boyfriend at the time, D and I were watching the news, and a piece came on about the Marine Corps Marathon. "How cool would it be to run a marathon?" I asked. "We should do it!" I was joking, but somehow my joke turned in to reality, and before I knew it, we were training for a marathon.

Here we are (I'm second from the left) finishing our very first one (we wanted to do the Marine Corps, but didn't get in...very high demand to run that one...so we ran in the first ever Baltimore Marathon instead). We really wanted to come in under 5 hours. You can see we came in just over. About a month before the marathon day, D pulled his groin and we couldn't train for two weeks. While running the marathon, he felt it pulling again, and at about mile 6, his knee started to hurt really bad. We were in the end, just happy to finish. It really is an exhilarating feeling knowing that you've pushed your body to do something so incredibly ridiculous. It is hard to explain. But amazing.

A year later, we did our second marathon, in Richmond. This picture shows me at about the 24-25 mile mark. My best memory from the marathon happened as this picture was taken. D's dad came out of the crowd and started running with us. He could tell that we were hurting and was so encouraging. I don't know if I ever told him how much I appreciated his enthusiasm and encouragement. It really helped. The Richmond Marathon is touted as "The Nation's Friendliest Marathon." Eh. Twice during the run there were protesters holding billboards of aborted children (yeah, they were against abortion and thought that was what we wanted to see while running 26 miles...), and they ran out of all food at the stops...so D and I never got any. We weren't happy about that. Food is very much needed to keep your body going during a marathon... And, they told everyone they would have masseuses available after the marathon to help cool down your muscles, etc. Well, they did for all the people that finished quickly. Not us people that finished later on...

This is D and I after we finished. We came in just under 5 hours. I look like absolute death. I had gotten a cold the day before we ran, and had not gotten much sleep the night before. Additionally, I hadn't eaten anything at all the entire day because I felt so awful in the morning and figured I would get snacks at the refreshment areas. Yeah. Not good. But we finished and we were happy with it.

I still hope to do one more. I want to run one with appropriate training and when I am healthy. I think I could finish in about 4-4.5 hours and would love to attain that goal. After that, I'd probably stop. :)

Thanks for remembering with me! For more memories, visit Jam's Own Reality.