Sunburn in November!

I expected to be sore from running after the marathon, but I certainly didn't expect to be sore from this:

I got a sunburn during the run and it sure did hurt! The thought of getting sunburned didn't even cross my mind! Towards the end of the race I could really feel the sun beating down on me and thought I might get a little burned, but definitely didn't think it'd turn out as it did!

When we were driving to Dallas after the run I could feel that my back and shoulders were a little sore and was really surprised to finally see my back when we got to the hotel room. I don't think the pictures does it justice! My face and chest were pretty red, too.

It hurt quite a bit for the first couple of days and I lathered on the lotion like crazy. It was such a relief on the third day when I realized it didn't hurt anymore and was fading into a tan. 

<<.....So Ross might say I was just a little overdramatic about the whole sunburn thing, but I think I earned the right to be :).....>>

Marathon #3!!!

I completed my third marathon this past Sunday! The marathon (26.2 miles) was in San Antonio, Texas, and was a "Rock 'n Roll" sponsored marathon which meant there were bands playing at almost every mile marker along the course. The journey to the finish line was certainly a long one that actually started in the summer. My official training program began during the second week of July, and I have spent the past 16 Saturday mornings doing my long runs. All in all, I logged 325 training miles! I did all of my running on the streets and sidewalks of Springfield and started between 5:30-6:30am on Saturday mornings. The picture below is the training schedule I've had posted on our refrigerator since the summer.

The marathon was in San Antonio, Texas, so Ross and I made a mini vacation out of it and arrived a day early to check out San Antonio. We went to the Alamo and the Riverwalk, but that was about it. We did do the boat tour on the river which was fun. San Anotino is a neat town, but we're just not the best of tourists so we actually ended up going to a movie Saturday afternoon to kill time!

San Antonio Riverwalk

It was really bright out!

The Alamo...not much to it!

The marathon was on Sunday, November 13, and started at 7:30am. We stayed at a hotel downtown, about a mile away from the starting area. We left the hotel at 7am and walked to the starting area to find this:

There were literally thousands of runners lined up for the race. A little over 30,000 runners participated in the race which consisted of a half marathon (13.1 miles) and a full marathon (26.2 miles). The majority of the runners ran the half marathon. As you can see in the picture, the day started off with cloudy skies, and the temperature at the beginning of the race was about 61 and slightly humid.

The race officially started at 7:30am, but I didn't actually cross the starting line until 8am! Each runner was assigned a corral to start in, and then each corral was released to the starting line at about one minute intervals. I was in corral 19 so that's why it took me so long to get to the starting line. I hated waiting that long to start, but this was actually a very well organized way of getting 30,000+ runners to start! 

Waiting to move up to the starting line.

I finally made it to the starting line!

Mile 3 near the Alamo. It was so much fun to see Ross along the course!

Ross was able to meet me at mile three and mile nine. It was sure nice to see him in the crowds! The first 2/3s of the race had spectators lined up along the streets cheering the runners on. The last 1/3 did have spectators but they were few and far between, until the final half mile. It is really encouraging to see everyone cheering us on!

There were water and Cytomax (like Gatorade) stations along the course, about every other mile at the beginning and then almost every mile towards the last 1/3 of the course. I took advantage of almost every water station! This wasn't my plan, but as the miles went on the clouds disappeared and the temperature warmed up. It was actually 85 degrees when I finished running! It was very sunny with no shade along the course and hot, so the water and Cytomax was definitely needed.

My goal was to finish anywhere between 4 hours and 45 minutes to 5 hours and 10 minutes. Anytime before 5:11 would be a personal record for me, and based on my training I was really on track to get that. Unfortunately, the weather was not on my side during this marathon. The sun and heat really slowed me down to where I ended up walking a lot of the last 5 miles. I'd try to run but would just feel like I was overheated and kind of see black spots in my eyes. I realized, too, that I had stopped sweating and know that that's not good, so decided to make my goal to just finish. I don't really feel like I hit "a wall" and I never really thought about quitting, I just wanted to get it done and get my medal! I finished the marathon in 6 hours 13 minutes. Definitely not the time I wanted, but I am very proud of all the training I did and that I did finish the race. I know I could have had a better time had it been cooler weather, but oh well, I finished!


I'm glad I did this marathon and all the training for it. I am a very driven person and love challenges. This was a challenge to myself, mainly because I did it alone. I did most all of my Saturday long runs alone. There were so many times I wanted to just turn off my alarm and sleep in, but I got up and did it, and for that I'm proud of myself!

I'll continue running because I do enjoy it. It keeps me in shape and just helps me feel good about myself. I don't think another marathon is in my foreseeable future. Not because of the outcome of this marathon, but because I don't feel like committing to another 18 weeks of training for at least another couple of years! I'm excited to not worry about going to bed early on Friday nights to have enough rest for my run and I'm excited to sleep in on Saturday mornings! Maybe someday later down the road I'll do another marathon. I ran a marathon for my 30th birthday so who knows, maybe I'll run another one for my 40th birthday! I definitely plan on doing more half marathons, though. Right now thinking about all of the long runs I did training for the full marathon, the half marathon training will be a piece of cake!

The finish line is in sight!!!!!

Almost there....

I finally crossed the finish line!

Very proud of my medal!

And very thankful for my husband who helped me put out water on Friday nights along my course to have for my run, who listened to all of my talking about my training runs and the marathon, who supported and encouraged me, who drove me to San Antonio for the marathon, and who waited on me during the marathon. Thank you Ross!

Technology

This summer I bought a Garmin running watch. It was a bit expensive, but I have found it was worth every penny. It not only has a clock and a timer, but for running it tracks mileage, pace, average pace, and the number of calories burned, just to name a few. There's a also a setting for riding bikes and doing interval workouts. I have been running with this watch the past 18 weeks during my marathon training and it has been great. It's helped me stay on target with my goal finish times and has also allowed me to not have to stick right to my course, but still get all of my miles in, since it tracks the distance I've run. It's amazing what can be done with technology these days. It think it's even more amazing how much I miss it when I don't have it . . .

I went for a 6-mile run this morning with some friends and just before we got started I turned my watch on to get it ready to go. It beeped at me and flashed "low battery." I've been pretty good at keeping my watch charged (it charges by plugging into a wall outlet or USB port on a computer), and the charge seems to last a while, but I forgot to check the battery life after my last run. I haven't had the low battery problem before so wasn't sure how long into the run the watch would last. I got maybe .8 miles in and looked at my watch to find that it wasn't on. I tried turning it on, but it wouldn't go. The battery was completely dead. It wasn't that big of a deal because we knew exactly where we were running, but I sure missed having my watch on! I had to resist the urge to look at my wrist to check my time, distance, and pace. And I SO missed not knowing where I was at distance-wise and knowing how much longer I had until I was done.

Cell phones are another example of a technology that is really hard to live without. This morning I drove Ross' car to meet my friends to run and brought my cell phone along. I put it in the car's console while running and forgot to get it out when I got back home and went inside. I realized this halfway through my getting ready process and kept reminding myself to get my phone out of Ross' car before I left for work. I could not imagine spending a whole day without my cell phone! Oh the crisis that would be!

It's funny how attached we get to our technology!

Happy Halloween!

For the past few years some friends of ours have had a Halloween costume party. We have gone and dressed up...or should I say we have gone, I have dressed up, and Ross has been a really good sport to dress up with me. :) Here's our history of Halloween costumes:

2009:  Grapes. This was the easiest and cheapest costume! We bought a package of green balloons and a package of purple balloons, blew them up, pinned them to our shirts, and our costumes were finished. Cost of costume:  $5!

2010:  A bed bug and a bride. Being that 2010 was our wedding year, I couldn't think of anything else to be, and I wanted to wear my wedding dress again, a bride was the costume for me! We had trouble coming up with and idea for Ross, but at the last minute he came up with the idea to be a bed bug. It was a very simple costume. He pinned a black sheet around him, made "antennas" out of aluminum foil, attached them to a headband, and he was a bed bug.
Cost of costume:  $0!

2011:  A hot air balloon and The Price Is Right contestant. I loved, loved, loved our costumes! I found the hot air balloon costume on Pinterst.com, and my sister gave me The Price is Right idea. For the hot air balloon, I took a basket that I already and had cut out the bottom. Luckily it fit perfectly over my hips so it stayed in place and I didn't have to worry about how it would stay up. I filled brown paper bags with stuffing and tied them to the basket with string for sand bags. I bought a 36" balloon and had it filled with helium. I actually got it home and found that it was just too big, so brought it back to the store to have air taken out. I taped ribbon to the balloon to give it some color, and then tied the balloon to the basket with string. I bought aviator glasses at a Halloween costume store to complete the look. The glasses were a bit expensive, but totally worth it!
Cost of costume:  $18 (the glasses were most of this cost)

Ross' The Price is Right contestant costume was pretty easy. I used a piece of foam board and taped green poster board to it using black electrical tape and spelled out the bid number with yellow duct tape. I cut up a wire hanger and wrapped it with black pipe cleaners and electrical tape to make the microphone. I found a template for the name tag online and printed it out. We found that we had to explain what Ross' costume was to a lot of people at the party we went to. This kind of surprised me.
Cost of costume: $8

One of my friends, Natalie, is a SUPERB math teacher. Her costume was X - a variable X, like in algebra. She had several math questions taped to her giant X, all using the variable X. She gave little boxes of Nerds candies to anyone who answered the questions correctly.

 Pam was a 70's chic. Love the wig, Pam!

In Sickness and In Health

Ross and I have been married for almost 1 1/2 years and just last weekend had our first experience with the "in sickness and in health" portion of the wedding vows we made to each other.

Friday afternoon I started having very bad stomach pains/cramps that would come and go in waves. There was no real pattern to them, they would just come and go. I was able to sleep okay that night and woke up feeling somewhat okay, so decided to go ahead with my 20-mile run. That wasn't such a good idea. I got a little over one mile in and had to stop and walk; I just wasn't feeling well at all. I kept going but when I got to mile four I decided I needed to turn around and go back home. I tried running, but that made my stomach hurt, so I walked the four miles back home.

I got home, took a shower, and then took a nap. I woke up to more stomach pains that just kept coming and going. I went downstairs and laid on the couch, my resting place for the rest of the day, the rest of the weekend even. I was just miserable the whole weekend with the pains coming and going. We asked my Dad for advice, and even went in to Urgent Care Saturday night and then the ER Sunday night because the pains just wouldn't stop. They ran a bunch of tests on me, but everything came back okay. The ER doctor prescribed some medication that helped cut the pain in half and eventually it was gone by late Monday afternoon. I was so thankful for that medicine. That stomach pain was so bad and there was nothing I could do to make it stop. I guess I just had a very bad case of the stomach flu. It was not fun and I would not wish that on anyone.

But back to my title, "In Sickness and In Health"

Ross was such a good husband to me over the weekend. He cleaned up the kitchen, changed our sheets, did all of the wash, got me whatever I needed whenever I needed it, went to the store to get Sprint and cracker, made me go to the doctor when I didn't want to because he was concerned there was something serious wrong, kept my parents updated on what was going on, got up with me in the middle of the night Saturday when I threw up, and he even brought me flowers and a get well card! I am so thankful to have him and am just so amazed at the way he took care of me. I've always known he loves me, but last weekend he showed his love for me in a whole different way and I am so thankful for him. Thank you Ross for taking such good care of me. I love you!

Get well card and roses!