Jackie and I agreed around mile 16ish or so that we were just going to go on and do whatever we could do. She has 14 or 15 marathons completed so she's much stronger than I am with the longer distances. I was able to keep her in sight until around mile 24 (more on that in a bit).
As I wrote earlier I was so disappointed when I didn't see James where I thought I would so that kind of dropped my spirits even more. Yeah, I'm such a baby :(. He most definitely made the right decision with staying and helping with the water stop, I am so proud of him for that.
At this point I'm playing the game of picking out a cone, sign or a pole to run to, then another to walk and so on. Wind is continuing to pick up and I'm soldiering on albeit slowly, lol....I get passed by one of the faster women from the regular start and she's taking walk breaks too. Later I found out from Jackie that this was the woman who won the MidSouth Marathon last year.
Mile 24 up the monster hill and this is where my left foot starts to cramp up. Yep, the one I had the plantar fasciitis problem with last spring, the one that hadn't bothered me for the past 3 months. That's the one :-(. Way more walking than what I wanted at this point, grrr and this is where I lose sight of Jackie for good. Finally up and over the hill but still walking more than running.
Finally some crowd support :). There was this lovely older lady that had a series of signs staked out in her yard and she was offering bottled water to the runners. So sweet and a welcome sight. I didn't need the water but absolutely loved that she was doing that. Groups of JR ROTC members are at every corner now. Some are cheering more enthusiastically than others but I was getting an "I love your tattoos!" from every single group, lol. Finally see James again and hand off my water bottle to him and get a quick kiss :). Muster up the energy to run (slog!) the last 1/4 mile through the finish line, smiling and laughing and almost crying all the way.
1 comment:
Awwww - I could cry!
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