Travel Plans

So we're trying to plan for our Boston trip. My hubby is super excited about spending thousands of dollars (yes I did say thousands) on this. But I'm trying to get the price down so we can all be happy. Besides when I am ever going to get to run Boston again? Probably never or at least not for a long time. Sooooo after researching flights I think we're making it work. If we fly into CT it's way cheaper then flying into Boston, and I have some fam. there who we're hoping to stay with for 2 nights. Then we'd only have to pay for a rental car and a hotel for 1-2 nights. So I'm hoping to lower the cost significantly...but we'll see. I am excited though!
Now my fitness level, or should I say blah level. It's amazing how out of shape you can get by taking a month off. That's all it takes to make me feel gross and out of shape. So today I'm back on the running kick. I got up and ran 3 miles on the treadmill (it's a snow covered wonderland outside). I'm just going to run 3 times a week till I think the last week in Dec. till real training starts. I actually feel a ton better just from that run today. Now the real challenge is all the holiday sweets. :)

Just call me a slacker

So after St. George I worked out at the gym almost every day for a week (to help my legs feel better)...and to compensate for all the food I was eating in Hawaii! Then when I got home, I think I forgot how to run or do much of anything. Or maybe I used the let your body have one day of rest per marathon mile. So yeah my 26 days of rest has come and past and I'm a slacker. I ran for the first time on Sat. and even though it felt great, I still haven't done it again. I think if I'm not training, I cheat doing my fitness runs. Just can't get myself to do it. So call me a slacker in running and blogging for the next few weeks.
Oh on an exciting note: I was accepted to run BOSTON! Yah! I was lucky. 25,000 runners signed up and within 8 hours the registration closed. Luckily I was included in those 25,000! I can't wait!

Video of run

It was Camerons first time using the video camera on our camera to film me running. Um yeah, you can tell it was his first time. I still wanted to post it though because it's all I have. This was me at the end of 26 miles...so beat. Enjoy. :)haha

My race results are in...

After a week of sleepless nights due to major anxiety over this race, I was nervous to say the least. Last night we checked into our hotel at 9:30pm in St. George and I pretended to go to sleep by 11 since I had to be up at 4:15am to leave for the race. Of course I didn't sleep a wink. After we boarded the buses that took us 26 miles up the canyon we got out to find it warm (it was a record for the warmest start time EVER). That worried me since it's usually freezing at 6am and I run much better in the cold than heat. 7,700 runners started at 6:45, me included. I had originally planned on running with the pace team to get my 3:40 finishing time, but I was ahead of them from the start and decided I better not chance waiting for them to catch up...so it was just me and my garmin. Have I ever mentioned how I LOVE my watch? It's amazing and made all the difference. So the race started and by mile 2 I was hot..not good. I ran hard, the hardest I ever ran. I decided to try and stay under an 8:20 min mile. One of the many hard parts was Veyo Canyon. That is the infamous volcano hill you have to run up for about a mile straight and it kills. So that slowed me a bit...but I never stopped running. I knew that at the half mark (13.1) I needed to be at 1 hour 49 min. I was at 1hour 50min. It was then that I knew if I didn't pull out all I had that I very possibly could miss the Boston qualifying time by 1min. or something totally defeating. So after that I tried to stay at an 8min. mile. The problem were the hills. St. George has a lot of downhill, but I forgot how much uphill there is too. Sprinting uphill at an 8min. pace kicks your butt very, very fast! At mile 20 my time was 2hours 45 min. Once I realized that I only had 6 left and that I was very possibly going to get Boston I was thrilled, but also knew I couldn't let up at all. So I didn't. Instead I experienced every emotion possible. I cried, I had a few hopeless feelings, at times I thought for sure that I was crazy...I mean who does this??? I had major highs of endorphins, but mainly I just keep kicking, and kicking as hard and fast as my body would allow. I finally saw Cameron at the last mile and I only had about 400meters left. I was a little over 3:30 and knew that I had Boston. Those last .2 of 26.2 miles were purely torture. I wanted to walk, actually I wanted to crawl or just fall over and never move my body again. Instead I kicked harder and crossed the finish line with a time of 3hours and 35 min and 28seconds.

One of the best accomplishments of my life. By far the hardest physical thing I have ever done, but one of the best achieved goals that I have experienced. I loved it! So many emotions, but a feeling of thankfulness for it all keeps running through my thoughts. Thankful that I know that even at times in life when we feel things are out of reach, they really can be reached.
Of course I am hobbling around, but I'm not complaining.

Just wanted to share my stats for the race
Out of 7,700 runners from the start only 5,694 finished. Out of that I placed 952 overall. There were 2,455 women who ran and I placed 186 out of them. For my age group 25-29yr olds I placed 28.
Now tonight we are packing to leave first thing in the morning for Hawaii. I think that is just the right recovery for all those miles. :)

One week and counting

Next Saturday at about this time I will be icing my legs and gorging myself on something ridiculously fattening while hopefully rethinking my amazing time....(that's me and my hopeful thinking). :) I've finally fully recovered from the flu, running last week was a bit challenging. Today I ran my last 10 before the marathon and I felt great. So I'm positive and looking forward to it. Even if I don't qualify (which I'm still planning on doing everything in my power to qualify)I've decided to not let it devastate me. I'm going into this still hoping I can, but realizing that it's an extremely hard goal and even as much and as hard as I've trained, a 3:40 may not be possible this time around. So here's to that, and this next week of easy runs, till Sat. :)

Yuck

Can I say Yuck? That's the word of the weekend. Yuck. Before bed I laid out my running clothes for my last Sat. morning 12 mile run. I was feeling especially tired but contributed it to the hike the boys and I just went on earlier that evening and my "running diet" that leaves me craving my chocolate and white bread. But unfortunately it was none of those, instead it was the evil stomach flu. From about 2am till 6am I ran from my bed, to the toilet for a nice throw up session, to bed and repeat. Not fun. I missed my run and spent most of Sat. feeling incredibly nauseous and weak. The best was when it was finally bed time and I went to sleep feeling exhausted, nauseous, and weak when I heard my little 4 year old crying. Crying because he had what I did, only he didn't make it to the bathroom, but did manage to cover a very large area of bedding with puke. Yuck. Theres nothing like cleaning up puke when you're on the verge of doing it yourselg. So, I got to clean, and then stay by his side as he repeated my ordeal. Then today I was luck enough to wake up feeling better, but weak and sleep deprived. But then today my husband got it too...Yuck. So I'm 2 weeks out and I'm just thankful that I got it now instead of on my race weekend. But on the bright side, I'm feeling lots better. It's only a 24 hr. bug, so by tomorrow my fam should be puke free. Oh and did I mention that on Sunday the day after the marathon me and my hubby are going to Hawaii? :) Now that is not Yuck.

Less than 3 weeks and counting

I can't believe it's almost here. Ready or not, St. George here I come. Today my nice mommy biked my 20mile run with me. Anyway you look at it 20 miles stinks. But there was some good news. First the weather was great, I think it started out around 50degrees and ended around 65 or so. It's beautiful to look around and take in the mountains with the sun peeking over them. Now only at certain points of my run, where my endorphins were buzzing, could I actually appreciate this. Other times I was grumbling about marathon running. What crazy person enjoys this? Oh yeah, that would be me ...at times. But I didn't have to take my ibuprofen until mile 17 which is a huge improvement from past runs. So the positives: no injuries, no knee pain, beautiful weather, great company. The negative: my time. Boston is seeming more and more out of reach. I just don't see how I can maintain an 8:20min/mile for 26 miles straight. So far I've had 2 20 mile runs and both have not even been close to averaging that. Bad news...very bad news. Of course IF and only IF I have an amazing running day where everything falls perfectly into place then maybe I can qualify. Otherwise it looks like I'll just try and if I don't I'm going to have to wait about 6 years till I'm 35 and the qualifying time goes up.