Honolulu Marathon Part 1

Soooo... remember that time when I decided to run a marathon and had less than 2 months to train for it?

I do.

What a sick joke.

Here's a summary of my training schedule:

Monday, October 17 - Day 1- ran 3 miles without stopping.  That was such an accomplishment.  (No but seriously.)

Between then and Thanksgiving - ran 3 miles several more times, worked up to 4.5 and 6.5.  Ran one 10-miler.  Ran one 16-miler.  Thanksgiving day - ran almost 20.

And that was the day I decided I hated running.

Between Thanksgiving (November 24) and December 4, I did not run one time.  According to all the official guidelines (that I had found online....okay they were blogs and small articles), we were supposed to peak at our maximum distance 2 weeks before the big day.  We were also not supposed to run a full 26.2 or farther.  Well we did one thing correctly.

The next week we probably should have taken it back down to 15 or something.  That weekend mysteriously came and went... and no running was done.

I mean I guess I worked out in between.  But I don't think cardio on the eliptical for a half hour counts as training for a marathon.

The week before the race I decided to get my shit together because it hit me that this was actually happening.  I ran 5 miles on Monday, 6.2 on Wednesday, and.... well that was it.

Damn I trained real well for this thing.

I couldn't help but think the Sunday before the marathon that in one week from today, it will all be over.

That was a consistent thought the weekend before the run.  Only 48 hours before I start... in 36 hours I'll be done... 24 hours until I'll be dead at the finish line...

Kelsey and I stuffed our faces with carbs the Saturday before the run.  We went to the convention center to get our packets with our bibs and running chips (cleverly named ChampionChips) that would keep track of our time.

What I was not expecting was the intense number of Asians that were at this convention and were going to be running this marathon.  They had their own section in the convention and everything!  Even the papers we got were English on one side and Japanese on the other.

Saturday night I strategically set my alarm for two in the morning so I could wake up, get a solid breakfast in, wake poor Tawni up to french braid my hair that tended to get nappy in long runs, take a nervous poo, and stretch for a solid hour, all while freaking out a little in my mind.

I tried to trick myself into thinking the freaking out was just excitement.  I think it worked.  Oh, mind games.

Kelsey's friend was kind enough to give us a ride at 4 AM, as he had already promised his other friend that he would take him to the starting line.  That saved us a cab ride.

We got there just in time to get to the clusterf*** of people trying to be corraled like farm animals (I may have "moo'd" once or twice).  It was a giant sea of people, and it was never ending.  Twenty-something thousand people were standing there waiting for the race to begin.

I won't lie.  Seeing all the people there actually helped to get me pretty excited - the first time I felt excited about this whole experience.  Better late than never.

We had ten minutes before the marathon started at 5, so I tried to take another nervous poo, to no avail.

We worked our way back to the starting point for people who were looking to finish in around 3 hours because if we had started in the front with the Kenyans we surely would have been absolutely trampled.  And nobody wants that when they're trying to run 26.2 miles.  Of course we weren't aiming to finish within 3 hours but we were advised to start there because otherwise we would have been caught in the back with all the slowpokes.

I turned on my ipod, started to jam out, and waited for the gun to go off.

This post is long and has taken me forever to write, so I'll leave you with this now and start writing the second part.

Oh, and here's a picture!

Ready to run!
Also, attractive.

Aloha!