I am so, so, so happy to be sitting on my couch right now. Hopefully I will be very soon napping on this couch.
My legs hurt like they’ve never hurt before.
I’m two for two on spending time in the medical tent after a marathon. Luckily, this time I wasn’t dehydrated and vomiting nonstop, but just in a lot of leg pain. There was a medical tent right after the finish line and even before I could get my medal I saw the nice, comfy cots and was like I WANT TO GO TO THERE.
A nice medical dude grabbed a medal for me and delivered it to me on my cot. Now THAT’S service!
After resting for a smidge and getting my blood pressure, heart rate, and temp taken (all great), someone mentioned that they could take me in a wheelchair to another medical tent to have a free sports massage. SO MUCH YES!
I was able to borrow a phone to call my awesome spectators — my dad and future MIL Greta — and have them meet me there. They patiently waited as I received a heavenly back, leg, and foot massage, and then we finally got to celebrate.
More pics to come in my full recap when I can get them from my Dad and Greta. This is just a mini pre-cap before the obnoxiously exhaustive recap!
My official race stats are funny. The last timing mat I ran over on the course clocked me as reaching the 20-mile mark in 3:00:12, which is 9:01 pace. I was sooooo on track to go sub 4:00 if I could have kept it up for the last 10K!
So I’m really proud of that. But I’m also REALLY proud of my six-minute PR, because I honestly thought PRing was out of the question once I started walking so much.
I won’t lie — at first I was upset (lots of F-bombs) when I started walking, both because I have never been so physically and mentally broken down in a race before, and because I honestly thought, “I’m going to let down my Tumblr peeps!” Y’all believed in me so much to go sub-4:00, and even hit 3:55. But that just makes me want to work even harder for Chicago.
I knew my dad and Greta would be worried when they didn’t see me come in at 3:55 or 4:00 or for several more minutes after that. Apparently my dad said something like, “What if she stopped at a medical tent somewhere along the course? We’d have no way of knowing.”
And Greta’s reply was, “Nope. She won’t stop.”
Nope. She won’t.
Dev on Running 