The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Da Feet

I made it. Well, WE made it. I can’t take credit for completing the entire marathon since 3 other guys helped. I finished my leg of the marathon with a better-than-anticipated time of about 1 hr. 15 minutes. I say “about” because I didn’t wear a watch. On purpose. I figured it would make me too nervous and I would have been glancing at it all the time.

Here is our team in all our glory POST race (l to r: Felix Gonzales, me, Larry Bellnap and Chris Bossard)



Yes. These men tower over me. Hence our team name “3 men and a baby”. It really IS because of my compared size and NOT because I whined the whole time training for this. Yeah. Really.

Here I am immediately after my finish, before I sat down on the grass and lost all ability to make the muscles in my legs work:



And here is Larry crossing the finish line with our official Team time. Not too shabby for our first time out! (Did I say “first” time? It must be the post-race fatigue, delirium and pain in my muscles sucking all reason out of my brain)



And I have to brag a bit about my daughter. Her first entry in any marathon and she ran a half marathon (that’s 13.1 miles) in 2:35:and some seconds. She was pretty pumped before the start of the race, even if she did have to get up at 5:45 a.m.



Here we are just after she finished….about 5 minutes behind me.



And here with are with our craaaaa-zy friend Karen who was our inspiration for all this insanity. Oh, she was an official pacer for runners and finished the entire marathon in 4:05:and some seconds.



Our team actually had a pretty good time. I will speak for all of them mainly because this is my blog and my reality, not theirs. Okay, I ASKED them all if it was as bad as they thought it would be. Chris was the only one who answered “yes” but he also ran the second-best time of our team so I think I can talk him in to running the relay again next year. Assuming our crew isn’t on shift for the Sacramento Cowtown Marathon next year, we will be there to beat our first-ever time. Because I CAN’T WAIT to experience this wonderful pain in my leg muscles that I am currently experiencing. Have I mentioned that? Yeah. And have I mentioned how wonderful it is to walk up and down the stairs in my house right now? Yeah. I’m a prisoner to my bedroom because I refuse to walk up and down the stairs. I came up here. I went down them. ONCE. Then came back up the stairs determined I would NOT walk DOWN them again. Down hurts, people.

And when we run next year, surely I can beat my personal best of 1:15:and some seconds. Well, it is my ONLY time ever so I’m pretty sure I can beat it.

I do have an entire year to train for it after all.