Marathon

Yesterday, I did the impossible.  I ran 26.2 miles.  All at once.  No, there was not anything wrong with my car.  I did it for fun.

It was the Washington, DC Rock N Roll Marathon.  My friend, Mollie, and her friend, Kim, did the half-marathon, so we ran together for the first 13 miles.  After that, I went on to run another 13.2 miles by myself.  It was a pretty well run race, and there was a band every mile.  Here is the play-by-play.

Kim, Mollie, and me before the race.

There were a little over 30,000 people registered for the races.  We all started together.  We lined up in corral 22, which was 2 city blocks away from the starting line.  They released a corral every two minutes.  We eventually made it to the started line a little over 30 minutes after the gun went off.

This was the view behind us at the starting line.  People for as far as you could see.

This is one of the many bridges we went over.  This one goes into Virginia, in the general area of Arlington National Cemetery (we turned around right after we went over the bridge, we didn't go anywhere near the cemetery).  Kim is posing in front of the columns.

I'm holding up one of the columns on the other end of the bridge.  We made a pit stop here.

This was an attempt to get a picture of the Capitol Building.  It's in the center, straight ahead of us.  We ran towards the Capitol three different times during the half-marathon, but we never actually got up close to it.  I finally got to pass by it the fourth time, around mile 15.

Here we are going through a tunnel.  This one was short, but we went through many, many tunnels.  I didn't count, but I'd say at least ten.

This was the view on the other side of the tunnel.  You'll never guess what we saw.  Yup, the Capitol.  Again.

After Mollie and Kim left me, I got really bored.  I'd say about 2/3 of the people there ran the half-marathon.    I started taking pictures of random things, mainly mile markers.  During the first half, I texted Joe one time, during the second half, I think I sent him three or four texts.  Just to make the time pass.  This is the 20k marker.  That's approximately 12.4 miles.

This was mile marker 16, not long after run by the Capitol.

This was a pretty riverside run.  I think that's the Potomac River.

Not much to see here.

Mile 23.  About 5k left.  Keep in mind that I started 30 minutes after the clock started.  At this point, I was extremely bored, and I was starting to get blisters.  I started to break the race up like, at mile 22, I ate a gel. At 23, I would take a picture and text it to Joe.  At 24, I would eat another gel.  At mile 25, I would text Mollie.  At 26, I would text Joe and eat a gel (woot!).  It was a great plan, but somehow I missed mile marker 24.  Oh well.

I eventually finished, 4:55:10 seconds after I started.  I walked through each water stop, stopped twice for potty breaks, and I had to walk a little during the last 3 miles, but otherwise, I ran the entire way.  It was hard, but not as hard as the half-ironman we did in January.