The one that got away

The thing with marathons is that, no matter what - how hard you train, how injury-free you remain, and a bunch of other things that end in -ain - you never know what awaits you out there on the course.  This year, my training was solid - and accomplished in record heat.  I remained fairly injury-free.  I added yoga and massage.  I stretched and recovered.  I did it right this time and felt good going into my 5th marathon.  I was going to rock it.

Race day at the Chicago marathon, the weather was warmish, but still 20-30 degrees cooler than anything I had run in this training season.  Here we were at the start

As you can see, I was happily thinking that I could definitely crush 4:30.  And then, my intestines defected (and a word very similar to that, if you add an "a") around mile 10.  And did not stop.  All told, my Garmin registered me as covering 27.1 miles and an additional 15 minutes spent in or waiting for potties.  There were times that I could not bounce, so I fashioned a TOTALLY crazy chicken walk, which was terrible, but kept me within an 11:00 minute pace.  And, throughout it all, my legs were fine, my body was fine, and I was ready to RUN, but could not.  Like I said, you just never know what's out there. 

So, I took some fun pics

and, in the end, I finished.  A personal worst time, but I finished.  (Note:  only 3 minutes longer than my last personal worst and still only 13 minutes later than my PR.)

(yep, so bad I had to change my shorts at the finish - nice) So, now I'm debating training for another week and running the RNR SA as a full marathon in November - even though I dislike the 2nd half of it.  Or, maybe I'll just get over it and run the next 25k, HM, 5k running tour, 8k, and 11k I have scheduled in the next three weeks. 

All of my ugly race pics can be found here

Super thanks to my folks, for coming down to the marathon - and my sisters and their families for hosting my tour de southeast wisconsin after the run.

More thanks to everyone who supported me in fundraising during training for Girls on the Run - SA.  I raised over $600, which will sponsor at least 4 girls during next year's training season. http://www.active.com/donate/SoleMates2012/SSeeker5

And thanks to Joe S, Marathonfoto, my folks, and Ceci for the pics.