What an awesome weekend!  The Knights won yet another Regional title and I survived yet another marathon! I’m going go ahead to put this marathon in the ‘Bad@$$ Category’ on my resume. Seriously, it was crazy. Sadly, I have hardly any race pics because my phone was triple zip-locked in my hydration vest due to the atrocious weather.  The temps were in the low 50’s, there was a significant amount of rain, and the wind gusts at times were around the 10-15 mph range. I was soaking wet basically the entire race and therefore (and obviously), cold. However, all this and it still felt great – I was definitely trained up for it. It was my fourth marathon, my second this year, and although my time was 40 min slower than the one I ran in Feb, I was still happy with it given the conditions and the fact that I wasn’t going for a PR.  I cruised the first 18 miles or so and then kicked it up a bit, negative splitting it like I did my other one. I was around 2:30 and 2:15 for my halves, holding sub 11 min miles, with my final and 26th mile being my fastest at 8:27, so clearly a lotta juice left! Also, I wore a visor for the first time ever and it significantly helped with the rain in my face – would highly recommend.

The best part of the race was of course finishing and getting out of those wet clothes. I was so desperate in fact, that I managed to change in public at gear check!! I couldn’t find a restroom and felt so dang frost bitten that I just had to make it happen somehow! After that, I met up with friends and we had the most fabulous day celebrating, enjoying each others’ company, eating and drinking! It was such a treat – one of the best days that I’ve had in a while! Shout out to Scott’s mom and dad for taking our bambinos! Oh and PS. I’m STILL cold.

Now the real training begins! I’ve got a very challenging (terrain) 50k trail run in Jan and my 50 mile trail run in February! Also, just a note…I’ve been foam rolling my legs before and after runs, and developed a nice sequence of lower body stretches that I’ve been using to keep my legs healthy since my wrist is still giving me trouble (doing my usual yoga routine regularly is a significant challenge). I’ve been considering making a video of it to share with fellow runners if there’s an interest! I think it’s really helped me keep injuries at bay in lieu of my yoga practice.