When the race started, I felt great. We peons started 5 minutes after the elite runners and it was wall-to-wall people in the open corral. It took us about 10 minutes to walk up to the start line.
My brother Greg and I decided that we would run the whole thing together, so we made sure our shoes crossed the mats at the same time.
I was going along so happy that I missed the first mile marker, and when I finally looked at my watch, we had already been running 16 minutes. It felt like 5! That was a good sign.
For the first 10 miles, Greg and I went along at about 9:40 pace, which was about 4:15 pace. At 10.5 miles we stopped so that he could go to the bathroom and get some vaseline for his nipples--they were chafing. I stretched while he was in the bathroom. We lost about 3 minutes there. At that point, my ankle started to hurt, so I waited until the next water station and then took some ibuprofin. It took a couple miles before it started to kick in, but eventually it did and I didn't have any more trouble.
At the 1/2 way point we were on track for 4:30.
But after that we started walking through the gatorade/water stations. Because of last year AND because the IOC was watching, there were a lot of water stations (every 2 miles or so).
I hit a wall of sorts at mile 15. I wanted to walk a little bit, but Greg convinced me that I just needed to take his ipod (I had brought mine, but it wasn't working for some reason) and it actually helped. Tremendously.
We stopped to stretch 2 more times--once at mile 18 and the other I can't remember when. Greg had to go to the bathroom once more. I think those stretching/bathroom breaks cost us roughly 10 minutes, but oh well.
Once we were in the single digits for miles left I felt better mentally. No problems from then on out, but again, we were walking through the water stations. We slowed significantly.
Our average pace overall was 11 minutes. We crossed the finish line at the exact same time (in fact, our listed times were EXACTLY the same).
I felt much better when I was done than I expected. I was actually able to walk back to the el relatively pain-free and I didn't take a nap like I thought we would. I went out to dinner with my parents and sister (the only sibling who didn't run--our other brother ran/walk to finish just over 6 hours) and the kids.
Today I feel sore, but not terrible. I do have some new blisters, but I'm taking care of them. My ankle hurts today, but only if I am barefoot, so I put on my shoes as soon as I woke up.
I hope to do some light running/walking this week.
There were a couple things that I wished I had brought with me: a functioning ipod (even though those weren't officially allowed on the course, many people had them any way), new shoes/socks for when I was done, new dry clothes. Other than that, I think I had everything I needed.
I already know I want to do more marathons, but I don't think my next will be Chicago. I think I would have done much better if it were about 10 degrees cooler (it was 80 or so) AND I think it would have been better with fewer people. There were a lot of walkers towards the end, and it was like an obstacle course the way we had to weave around them.
But I found out this morning that around 11,000 runners didn't show up. It could have been worse. | 