DNF Is NOT an Option

Well. Yesterday, J called me from the LR Marathon / Half marathon expo and told me that if I decided to drop down to the half, I wouldn't get a finishing time and would be listed as DNF - DID NOT FINISH. See, when we signed up 6 months ago, we'd both signed up for the full. Since then, J has trained perfectly. I ... have not. I never did the 20 miler that is a rite of passage before a marathon. I never even did an 18 miler, and I'd all but quit running during the week. I can taper with the best of 'em, right? Regardless, I knew that running the half would be smarter, given my less-than-stellar training, but if I'd done that today, I'd been listed as DNF.  Did not finish.  That feels so uncool.

See, I'd been toying with the idea of running the full all week, but had pretty much decided that the Half would be much smarter.  I never said I was all THAT intelligent.

Last night, J and I drove the full marathon course - the part we hadn't already run during half marathons in the past. And by the end of the evening, I'd pretty much decided to give the full a go. I'm  not sure when, if ever, I'll have this solid of a running base. Even though the longest I went in training was 16 miles, I felt like if I ran smart, I could probably finish the damn thing. And I did do three 16 milers in training, each of which helped me know what works and what doesn't on long runs.

I never said ANYTHING about finishing fast.  Finishing was all I was after.

One of the most important things I learned during my training was that I have to eat while I run. I take about 150 calories every hour, sometimes a little more than that. That is apparently enough to get me through, and it worked like a charm today. Every time I started going into negative thought land, every time I started thinking about how long I still had to go, I ate something. Apparently, my stomach and my mental status are strongly connected.  Who knew?

The most interesting part of the day happened right about the first split of the marathoners and half marathoners. See, in the LR marathon, the marathoners and the half marathoners run the first 11 or so miles together. Then, there is a split, where you have to decide what you are doing. Marathoners go straight, halvers go right. As I was approaching the split, I was listening to one of my podcasts, and the topic du jour was "fear of road races." 

I decided it was a sign, and it just helped reinforce the decision to go straight.

In the end, I finished at 5 hours and 7 minutes. Although it wasn't horrible, it still feels crazy to have started running at 8 this morning and finished at 7 minutes after 1 this afternoon. But I finished, and I'm totally thrilled and actually pretty damn proud. That was a long freakin' way to run, and how lucky am I to have legs strong enough to do that. Deeply satisfying.

Tomorrow, when I can't sit down, when I might go down stairs backwards, I may feel differently. Tonight, I'm just very, very satisfied.