So! Hard to imagine being in Miami now, with the arctic chill going on here... still - it was only a week ago! South Florida is beautiful. Except when it's 5:30 am and you're waiting to start a marathon and it is pouring down rain and you are soaking wet. And your shoes are wet and your socks are wet and everything you're wearing is wet and your hair is wet and you're dripping, and it's pouring. Which is what happened to us! Most of the weekend was really nice, but we had torrential downpour from about 5:20 to 6:40 am on Sunday, right at the start of the race. So! Much! Insanity!!!

Fortunately it cleared up a little ways into the race, a couple miles in I'd say. It is all sort of a blur now! I hung with my pace group through about mile 8 or 9, when the right knee really started to bother me, and then I ran most of the rest of the way alone, although I did meet some interesting people along the way. There were lots of people out there in the back of the pack with me who were wearing t-shirts for the 50 States Club - so they have completed a marathon in all fifty states!!! Amazing! And they were not crazy runners or anything, just back there with me, cranking out 15-minute miles.

There are some cool links that you can check out to see my stats and some pictures taken during the race.

Race Pictures

Standard Stats

Nifty Stats

The nifty stats have several pages - check them all out by clicking "next" at the bottom of the page.

The race was hard. I am not going to sit here and tell you it wasn't. It was really, really tough. I did not think I was not going to finish. I knew that I was going to finish, but there were definitely points when I thought, "I know I can make it, but I don't know HOW." The hardest part was just the mental challenge of running, you know, seventeen miles alone, with no one to talk to after I couldn't keep up with my pace group. The second hardest thing was the knee pain - just made it really hard to keep going sometimes. Coach Fred was on the course on mile 23, and so when I got to that point he walked with me for a while, making sure I was okay and talking to me. Asking me if I felt dizzy or faint, and touching my skin and asking me when the last time I ate was, and if I had taken any salt, and I said, "I feel fine, just my knees hurt real bad." And he said, "I'm not worried about your knees." Okay, cool. Coach Fred is not worried about my knees, and there's only three miles to go. I am all over this. Then he started telling me about where we were in the course we always run in DC. "We've passed the Washington Monument. We're walking up that little hill, we are almost to the Natural History Museum. You've done this a dozen times before." So then it was like, ok, I can really do this, I am almost there. He warned us ahead of time that there would be a point when we just wanted it to be over, and that was definitely true. I met up with another AIDS Marathoner from DC during mile 26, and I just kept saying, "Ok, let's just get this done, let's just make it happen. Let's beat the guys picking up the cones. Let's just get this done." So we did!

Here is my advice for when you run the marathon: if you have to use the bathroom, wait until the second half. The first three pit stops, there are huge long lines of people. But at mile 17 or so, you just walk right into the porta-potty, you could have your pick of porta-potties. Especially when 90% of the field is ahead of you.

You want to see my splits, don't you, I can tell you are dying to see them. Okay, here they are:
1. 12:40
2. 12:49 - 25:29
3. 12:40 - 38:10
4. 10:49 - 49:00
5. 14:32 - 1.03:32
6. 9:43 - 1.13:16
7. 11:32 - 1.24:43
8. 11:44 - 1.36:32
9. 12:12 - 1.48:45
10. 13:09 - 2.01:54
11. 14:18 - 2.16:12 (Here's when the winner finished)
12. 15:31 - 2.31:44
13. 13:50 - 2.44:34
14. 14:06 - 2.59:42
15. 13:30 - 3.13:13
16. 16:01 - 3.29:14 (Here's when I really started to lose my mind - still ten miles to go)
17. 16:30 - 3.45:49
18. 15:23 - 4.01:12 (realized I was still going to be out for close to another two hours)
19. 13:18 - 4.14:19
20. 13:53 - 4.28:24
21. 15:55 - 4.44:20
22. 12:54 - 4.57:14
23. 17:53 - 5.15:08 (walked most of the mile, also went to the bathroom)
24. 15:22 - 5.30:31
25. 14:01 - 5.44:32 (just get me out of here, please let it be over. please. now. god.)
26. 15:42 - 5.59:15

Took an ice bath right afterwards, and as a result could walk down stairs on Tuesday, when many of my pals who went in uninjured, and as a result did not think they needed ice baths, were practically in traction. I am feeling, I'd say, 80% right now, although late last week I felt close to 100%. Knees are bothering me a little more right now, I'm sure it will take me several weeks before they are back to normal. Still going to physical therapy and everything, and I'm hopeful that I'll be able soon to run without pain. So now I'm plotting: do I want to run the Marine Corps Marathon on October 28, or Philadelphia Marathon on November 18, or both? A couple of my pals are doing the National Marathon here in DC in March, I will just be cheering them on, but perhaps will be joining them a few months later.

SUCCESS!
I finished! Pictures and more details to come.

It is freezing cold here, so I think I will go to Florida for a little bit.

I'm leaving for Miami in just a few hours! So hard to believe that this weekend is finally here. I packed last night and I hope that I have everything with me I need. I haven't been stressing too much about the logistics of the trip, so I hope that doesn't backfire. I am just going to chill out and have a fun weekend.

I was looking around last night for reading material and settled on Catch 22, which I've never read. I opened it up and inside the front cover is a little sticker that says "Youngstown State U. Bookstore $0.95" and then on the opposite page my dad wrote his name. Pretty cool!

I am downing the anti-inflammatories like there is no tomorrow. Well, actually, I am doing it like there is a tomorrow, followed by another tomorrow, on which I will run 26.2 miles. Forty-eight hours from now the elites will all have finished the race.

I don't know what my internet access will be like in Miami but I will do my best to update!

This morning was my very last training run with my group. On Friday I'm leaving for Miami to run the marathon. We had some very cold weather just to get us all geared up for the Florida sunshine. It was actually snowing, which you may not have noticed if you weren't actually out in it, and extremely, extremely windy and awful. The absolute temperature was in the mid-thirties but the windchill made it seem like negative forty-two. I am exaggerating. It was more like negative sixteen. Okay, positive sixteen. Still.

This was the pep talk that Coach Fred gave me this morning: "You are where you are, you know what it's going to feel like, and you're strong enough to do it." It was almost funny, in a tragic sort of way. I have made a pretty good recovery in my left knee, but my right knee is sort of freshly injured, and that was his first point - the condition I'm in right now is the condition in which I'm going to have to race, because it's in a week. And yes, I know what it's going to feel like - it's going to hurt, real bad. My perspective on this is that it's going to hurt everyone, or almost everyone anyway. Most people are going to run the last six miles in some amount of pain. I'm just instead going to run the last twenty in pain. Okay, the last twenty-three. And yes, I am strong enough to do it. I know that I will finish.

If you did not know, I am going to run the marathon in a skirt. I have been saying this for several months now, and it looks like most people thought I was joking. Actually, some people thought I was joking when I told them I was going to run the marathon, period. ANYWAY, no joke, I'm going to race in a skirt. A navy blue skirt with white stripes on the sides. It is a running skirt. They make skirts for endurance running. I didn't know that when I first started saying I was going to race in a skirt - I just planned to do it in a tennis skirt, but they actually make them for running so that is the kind that I got. This is Miami we're talking about, so I wanted to look crazy. Plus I am smokin' hot in that skirt, wait until you see it. Pretty soon there is going to be a picture of me up here in a navy blue skirt and running shoes with a finisher's medal for the Miami Marathon hanging around my neck. Excuse me, the ING Miami Marathon. In case you are interested, here is a link for the course map. When I first opened this up I just stared at it. When you look at it, your first thought will probably be, "wow, it looks beautiful." Mine was, "wow, it looks... long."

http://www.ingmiamimarathon.com/PDFs/2005INGMiamiMarathonCourseMap.pdf

20 Miles yesterday!!!
Pretty crazy thing to do. It actually went pretty well, considering the knee pain is still a problem. I've been doing physical therapy and substituting cycling for my maintenance runs, so that's helping a lot. But I did succeed in running for the final long training run, and it definitely boosted my confidence for running the marathon in THREE SHORT WEEKS. Hard to believe it is almost here. I can't believe everything that I've accomplished.

ESPECIALLY raising over $2,500 for the Whitman-Walker Clinic so far, and contributions are still coming in. Really, really amazing. Thank you so much to all of you who donated. I am writing you all personal notes!! Just like my mom taught me! I was blown away to find out yesterday that the AIDS Marathon participants for this year's Miami Marathon and Half-Marathon have raised OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS for Whitman-Walker. I have been privileged to get to know many of these amazing people as I've trained with them who are all doing their part just like me, and it has been an incredible experience.

The crazy part of yesterday's run was, of course, the weather. We got a Miami preview for our final long training run! Record highs were set for the date. National Airport got up to a stunning 73 degrees, breaking the record of 72 set in 1950. Pretty incredible. Let me tell you what, it was HOT out there. Who ever thought that I would be running 20 miles on January 6 in DC in a t-shirt and shorts? Not me! Well, I never thought I would be running 20 miles, period! Anyway, it was really nice to have the experience of running a very long distance in weather similar to what we will experience on race day. It is JANUARY, y'all. I mean, what. What is this. A pathetic excuse for winter, is what.

I will keep the updates coming!

I've been struggling with a knee injury since just after the seventeen-miler, and so I missed the twenty-miler last week. The problem is with my patellar and quad tendons in my left knee, and also the left IT band. So I'm wearing a brace and I've just started physical therapy. I'll be substituting cross-training (swimming and biking) for most of my running between now and the marathon, with the exception of our last long training run on January 6, when I'll hopefully be okay to run twenty miles while the rest of my group will do twenty-three. As long as I can get my knee healthy and keep it that way, I'll be fine for the marathon. So, I'm optimistic.

Also, my fundraising is pretty much done, which is great. I was so overwhelmed by people's incredible generosity. It's really amazing to realize how much of a difference that money is going to make in the lives of people in this city who are living with HIV/AIDS. That's really the whole reason that I did this, and to see it accomplished is really rewarding.

Well, tomorrow I am going to run 17 miles. A couple weeks ago, when I ran 14 miles, I felt nervous, and now I feel really nervous. It seems like a really long distance, mainly because it is. Coach Fred gave us a mantra: "I've trained, I'm strong, I'm ready." Well, I've trained and I'm strong, but I don't know about ready. As ready as I'll ever be, I guess. I have not been feeling the greatest, health-wise, and my life is in a little bit of upheaval on other fronts right now, so that's probably the main contributing factor in my nervousness.

I know I can do it. Coach Fred also told us, "the person who says 'I can' and the person who says 'I can't' are both right." So, there you have it: tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and meet some pals down on the waterfront pretty early in the morning, and we are going to go run 17 miles.

One of these pals is already talking about the next marathon, and what training program she's going to join, etc. I said, "Are you crazy?" And she said, "you'll see when we finish, marathons are like crack, you won't be able to stop with just one." And I said, "Watch me."