30th Wineglass Marathon vs. almost 30 year old Jen

This weekend we went to Corning, NY, where I ran the Wineglass marathon and Mike ran his first half marathon. Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong prior to the race did. This past week was stressful to say the least. When we got to the hotel, they didn't have our reservation because apparently when I made the reservation back in June, the hotel representative made the reservation for Cortland instead of Corning, then when I called to correct it, they made me a reservation in Corning, then for some reason cancelled it on the same day (fortunately the hotel had one available room left,and an awesome lady working the front desk, so we didn't have to sleep in the car). The room smelled like smoke, the bed was rock hard, and there may have been something living in the microwave (whatever it was made a lot of noise). At race time, it was 38 degrees and raining. We got lost several times trying to find the start. Then we had to stand around in the pouring rain while the start was delayed 15 minutes.

Despite all that (or maybe because of it?), it was a great race. Mike was awesome. The farthest he'd ever run before today was 11 miles, but he crushed the 13.1 in 2 hours 33 minutes!

I started off with the 3 hour 55 minute pace group. The pace leader was an Australian guy who has run over 100 marathons and had a lot of helpful advice. Plus, listening to his accent and terrible jokes was a nice distraction over the first half of the race. I felt good and started to pull away from the group in the second half. I kept reminding myself to relax and save something for the end. All in all, I felt great up until the 20 mile mark. By that point, I was wet and tired and my leg muscles were starting to twitch uncomfortably. I was really afraid they would cramp up like they did in Cleveland, but thankfully that didn't happen. I really, really, really (infinity of reallys, really) wanted to stop. But I just tried to stay positive and keep talking myself through it.

Keep going. You're doing it. One step at a time. Thank you body. Please hold on for 6 more miles, 4 more miles, 2 more miles, 1 more mile, until I get to those weird space blankets. I love you legs, I love you lungs, I love you heart, I love you muscles and bones and cells. You can do this. You are strong. Just keep going. Constant forward motion.

Those last 6 miles were seriously long, but I ran the entire way and finished in 3 hours 50 minutes (chip time 3:49:56, 479th place out of 1447 finishers). I honestly had no expectations for this race. I didn't think it was going to go well at all. So I'm thrilled that my second marathon was way better than my first and that I finished in under 4 hours. I finally feel like I can buy myself one of those 26.2 stickers for my car.

I think I'm going to take some time off from marathons for a while and concentrate on speed work to get my 5K time under 20 minutes. I will probably end up running another marathon in the future, but after doing 2 of them in cold, rainy weather, I'm definitely making sure the next one is someplace warm.

Lyric of the moment: "Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way. See how they shine. If you need a friend, I'm sailing right behind. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind..." (Thank you iPod shuffle for serving up the Johnny Cash/Fiona Apple cover of this song at around the 23 mile mark, as I was running across a bridge over a mini waterfall.)