Welp. It’s official. I signed up for my first marathon.

Yesterday was the San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon. I did not participate.

Earlier in the year I considered doing the half at SA as a warm up to running a full in December. After some major IT Band woes that plan changed. I watched some of the live video feed from the website that morning and admired the finishers. It was actually quite entertaining. They had two finish lines, one for the half and one for the full.  Both races started at the same time. So at the 3 hour mark I watched the overly-in-shape athletes crossing the full marathon finish line, and at the same time watched the “recreational” runners crossing the half marathon finish line with arms raised high in celebration. It was awesome. And it reminded me of why running is so great. That even in a race–everyone’s race is their own.

Yesterday I also ran my 15 miles for the first time. This was 3 miles further than the 12 I ran last week (which was also my furthest at that time). It was brutal. Because of my knee, I’ve been specifically avoiding hills. Yesterday wasn’t an option. My running buddy, BJ, talked me into doing my miles with him on a route near his house. Now in all honesty these hills weren’t that bad. Nothing that would be unexpected in any marathon I do, but after avoiding them for so long, they were wicked. My knee actually held up pretty well, but my quads were in so much pain. I was mentally exhausted too. There were many points that I wanted to tell BJ to go on and I’d eventually make it back, but I knew he wouldn’t let me get away with that. He’s a football coach, but his coaching could extend to running as well. He knew when to push it, and didn’t let me quit even though I wanted so badly too.

As we talked he said something that convinced me to go ahead and sign up. I told him that many people suggested I just run the half and save the full for later.  He advised against it saying that most people do that and get stuck only running halves because they can’t imagine running that distance twice in a row. Right around the point that we hit 13 miles I knew what he was talking about. I literally wanted to lay down on the ground and stop. But we pressed on–and although those last couple of miles were the worst I’ve ever run–we finished. I was suddenly reminded of Dean Karnazes’ book where he talks about the pain of running and the human resolve to not stop, and to keep going. It reminded me that running that far was supposed to feel like that. As Dean would say, “it’s supposed to hurt like hell”.

So after I got home from the run we had a Thanksgiving Dinner with our home group from church. Perfect timing for a 15 miler earlier that day. I loaded up and quickly gained back the 4 pounds that I had lost that morning by running.

(Brandon liked the Thanksgiving Dinner too)

I woke up this morning sore, but no worse than any other time after a completing a new long distance. So I signed up. And Lord willing, I’ll be running/walking/crawling the Dallas White Rock Lake Marathon in less than a month. I’ll try to keep the blog up to date for the next month leading up to it. I already know a handful of other folks running white rock, but I’m sure there are more so if you’re one of them let me know!