I know I have gotten on my high horse about walking before. Complained about people who would rather walk to their car for five minutes then drive for 3 minutes all to avoid walking for 15 minutes. This I witnessed just this week.

Abel is one of my kind. A walker. No, not a puffy white sneaker on your lunch break walker. A walking for the fun of it because we can walker. Tonight we were walking to no where in particular when he squeezed my hand and said, "Mommy, I like being with you." Is he not the cutest buddy.

And all because we were walking. I know he may have said that had we been doing anything else together but I don't think so. I love Abel and we love to walk and that's that.

It is over.

We are officially marathoners! It is incredible that this whole long process has ended. We have stiff muscles to prove it.
The weather was nippy but perfect and as we started out at 7:30 am I was so relieved to get going. We were off and after what felt like seconds they were giving the 1 mile times. We had to make ourselves slow down several times during the first ten miles, which is hard when there are a lot of people cheering you on! We had to reserve our energy for the last of the miles.

My family and some of our friends were at the 15 mile mark. That was great to come around the corner and see them cheering us on. We still felt very strong at that point and I was convincing my brain to not generate any negative thoughts. By mile 18 it was getting harder, we missed that mile marker so when we found the next one and it was actually 19 we were relieved! At mile 20 I kept chanting, "only one more hour to go." Which is a crazy way to think since we had already been running for over four hours. We managed to only stop a few times* up until that point and I was still feeling pretty good. It was around mile 22 when things got a little hazy! I was just putting on autopilot and dreaming of the finish. Scott was my only line to energy. He kept telling me stories so I could stop thinking about running. I didn't believe it would all be over soon.

I got choked up as we came off the river trail and onto the Ford St. bridge. That was proof to me that we weren't going to be running on that trail forever! I was going pretty slow by then but we only had just under two miles to go! After the last hill on Plymouth Ave. my left leg gave out on me. It was the strangest sort of pain I have felt. I grabbed Scott so I wouldn't go down and couldn't believe this was happening this close to the finish. Then I started seeing white spots on the pavement and I fought passing out. I couldn't quit now! We could hear the finish line less than 3/4 mile away. After walking for about 5 minutes with Scott's help I started shuffling along again.

We rounded the corner to Frontier Field and it was then that I figured out that we were actually going to be done with this thing in the matter of minutes. Coming up to the finish I got all emotional again and then it was all over! We were done in 5:28 (that's 5 hours :))

Incredible. Thank God for Motrin! And for all the people who came out to cheer us along, and of course our training partners Brian and Becca. They were amazing and finished ahead of us, great job!

Scott was my rock. I couldn't have done half of the long runs without him let alone this longest run. He is so strong at the end and had to shorten his stride for me! Now that is love. :)

Edited to note* our walk breaks were through water stations for brief periods

We are on the down swing of running now before the big push. I am starting to get a wee bit nervous. It feels so strange to be running a 3-5-3-8 week compared to the four weeks of Aug that were much longer. Now we are just hoping to get through the next two weeks with a good diet and good rest. Loads of water and some extra carbs does the trick, I hear.

It's kind of like being pregnant. (in a twisted kind of way) That is all I can relate this experience to. You have months of preparation, some emotional times, some great moments. You get weird pains you have never felt before and then sometimes you stand up and can't get moving for a minute. There are even nights when you wake up with very similar leg cramps. Waves of food cravings hit you at odd times and you could take naps any day of the week. Then you work up to this one event that is mostly a test of endurance and once you push it out you have sudden relief! But the only reward you get with running is the satisfaction and I think I could live with that right now.

One of the hardest runs we did several weeks back was while we were camping. It was a 16 miler over huge hills. We decided to cut up the route into 4 mile chunks which was very helpful. Until the last 4 miles. We started out pretty strong and then I think I had od'd on power gel plus the sun was getting pretty high by then. My stomach was not happy. With two miles to go I knew I had to push through it and get back to the job of camping. We were on a pretty busy road so cars were passing at a consistent and fast pace. As we were heading up the last batch of hills I imagined each passing car was a wave crashing over my me as I was lying on some white sand beach. I let the image of the water run over me and revive my uncooperative muscles and take away all the pain. It worked! I made it the entire way back and ate lunch. Perfect.

Well, more to come after the big day.