Kansas City Marathon 2012

As you may have seen on Twitter and/or Caroline's facebook, I finished the Kansas City marathon on Saturday.  My goal was to be under 4:00 and I did that - coming in at 3:43.  It was an absolutely gorgeous morning.  Beautiful sunrise, cool temps and bright fall colors.  It's too bad that I couldn't really enjoy it after about mile 15 or so.  Haha.

I had got derailed a little bit in my training and didn't get any really long runs in.  The longest training run I finished was 18 miles.  I probably should have run a little more.  I was super diligent on my weekday runs and cross training, and I think that paid off.  Odd things start to hurt when put through that kind of repition.  So, about mile 18, the toes on my left foot started hurting, then throbbing.  I knew there was nothing "structurally" (I mean come on, it's my freaking toes) wrong.  I think I tried to change my stride to accomodate and that caused my right calf and left hamstring to hurt a little bit.  Anyway - at that point, I knew that if I stopped, I would not start again and I also knew that it would still hurt walking, so I might as well keep running.  So, I didn't exactly finish strong, but I did finish.

After I finished, I popped off my shoes and my toes were a light shade of purple so I think I had cut off circulation.  I don't know if I had my shoes laced funny or what the deal was, but they sure hurt! 

The highlight of the race was seeing Caroline and Vera about mile 23.  Vera started screaming and pointing at me, which kept me going through the last 5k or so.

I think I had mentioend this before, but this was my best chance to run a marathon from a life timing perspecitve.  Caroline was kind and willing to get up with Vera on Saturdays while I ran and Vera is old enough that she doesn't require completely constant care anymore.  With baby #2 on the way and Lord willing subsequent children, I don't know when I'll be able to try another marathon.  I will keep runinng though.  5Ks, 10Ks and even half marathons don't take a ton of extra training when you have a pretty decent base.

I think I would like to try another marathon someday.  I think I'd try to run the first 13 a little faster - I actually run my first 5k at a 9:00 mile pace and finished the race with an overall pace of 8:31, so I could definitely go faster when I'm fresh off the start.  I think I could probably go under 3:30 with some strategy (and confidence that I can finish now that I've done one), and I'd like to try sometime, but probably not the 2013 KC marathon.

I referenced this above, but Caroline was super supportive.  For one, she is a sucker for human accomplishment type stories.  She loves watching the Biggest Loser and she claims watching the finish to the marathon is very inspiring - so I have that going for me.  She was very flexible with me about letting me train and picking up the parenting slack while I trained.  She was also my sports psychologist - telling me that I could finish and encouraging me.  So, thanks, Caroline - you're great.