Headline: Average Mom With Marginal Athletic Ability Scores Sponsor!

26.2 and I are having a REMATCH.

That's right. I'm coming for you, 26.2! AGAIN! (Feel free to read about my last 26.2 experience at Disney.)

Quick Background
You may or may not have known me back then, but a little over a year ago when I was blogging at Baby Tea Leaves, I wrote this post about how come average athletes of the universe couldn't land sponsorships.

It was more of a question than an explanation. (Go ahead -- I'll give you a minute to go read it, I really do make a pretty good case there I think!)

Here's the gist of it:

Think about it, potential sponsors! Forget the Lance Armstrongs of the world! Here's an Average Mom right here, ready to target all your regular moms like me who are waiting till their husbands come home to train for something, who miss workouts they can't miss so they can wipe their children's noses and can't find a sitter, one who still has some cellulite despite all the working out she's doing and rides along in her mini-van that she tries to make cooler by putting a "triathlon" sticker on the back of it while rocking out to nursery rhymes.

I mean, what company wouldn't be wooed by that, right?

Ok so I didn't get any calls that day. Or the day after. Or the day after that. I was mostly kidding anyway.

You see, I, average 30-something minivan mom, admit to having marginal athletic ability. But if it counts (and I think it does!) I have the heart of an elite athlete. I just don't have the sponsor money and all that time to train, and well, ability, (and perhaps body) of an elite athlete. Which is all sort of key to actually being an elite athlete.

Yes, I know, I know, just having the heart won't have me crossing finish lines after having run 5 minute miles, but still. Heart is a lot! Heart is what the midpack of America has and heart is what the readers who come here have and heart is what I see on Twitter and Facebook and in the race reports I read all year long from all my friends!

If there is anything, there is heart!

Well by golly gee, someone thinks that having heart is worth sponsoring after all! Because I have landed my very first sponsor!! And they are sponsoring my rematch with 26.2, the Miami ING Marathon in Miami next January!!

Woooohooooo!

Can you believe it? I'm busting, Jerry, I'm busting!

So I want to say, thank you, Girlz N Gear!

Thank you for sponsoring this rematch with 26.2. And thank you for believing that Midpack America is worth believing in!

We might not be elite athletes, in fact, we are just one sweaty face in a sea of thousands on race day (and perhaps wearing a tutu and in that case one in only a handful of runners wearing a tutu, if that counts, and I think it does). But us midpackers represent all the athletes out there who are pushing themselves outside their comfort zones for no reason whatsoever except for being healthy and the feeling of crossing a finish line however long after we started. The ones who come in 10th through 1,010th, who walk away with the knowledge that they can do something they didn't think they could for a period of time that is really just insane.

So mid-to-back-packers of America Unite!

I promise to represent.

And guess what else? Next week, Girlz N Gear is sponsoring a Twitter party!

With prizes and everything! So make sure you stop by, next Wednesday night on Twitter from 8p-9p Eastern, hashtag #girlzngear, mkay? We're gonna talk gear and running and they've got some pretty cool prizes lined up!

While you're here, have you taken the Girlz N Gear slogan poll for their new t-shirt and entered the giveaway going on here right now???

How Going to Disney is Like Running a Marathon

We are freshly back from our two-day Disney excursion where I realized that going to Disney World with the family is a lot like running 26.2 miles through the Disney parks itself.

We had a big group of us, my best friend and her family, some of their friends, one day with my husband and one day without and in the end 7 LITTLE BOYS, roughly the same age. We were completely outnumbered.

If you've run a marathon and gone through the trials and tribulations of such, then you will completely identify (I think) and if you haven't, then there is only one thing to do: run a marathon! (Obviously!) Just kidding.

Anyway, besides the fact that the scenery is mostly the same (except that the run does not go through Space Mountain like I got to!) here are the similarities to a day at the park and a day running through the park.

Like in the marathon, you have a good breakfast first.

Then you start out slow and get the feel of it because you're not quite sure yet what to make of it.

You have a great time along the way, you see lots of characters, take pictures and everyone is having a blast.
You're starting to feel comfortable now.


There is both running and walking.

You do all sorts of things you have never done before (like BE A PIRATE!)

You battle your demons.

And you find out what you're made of.

Sometimes you feel like you're flying.

And sometimes you feel (and look) like a super hero.

You find safety in numbers because you're all in it together.

Then there is some pain involved because you're doing this for a long time and therefore, you find aches and pains in odd places. Sometimes for days afterward (Like today. Because I was mama sherpa carrying everything and everyone.)

You hit the bathrooms a lot. You are sweating. Profusely. For most of the day.

You're becoming a hot mess.

Eventually you and everyone around you get pretty tired. You're not sure you can keep going.

But you dig deep and rally. Because hello! It's Disney! It's the happiest place on earth! Of course you have more left!

So you have some more fun. Which in the end always outweighs the work you put in to get there.

And when all is said and done, the day was pretty long, you're all sorts of exhausted and definitely a bunch of sweet hot messes and inevitably there is crying at the finish.

And usually it's the ugly kind.

But going to Disney (like the marathon and also even like labor if we're being honest) becomes only this fantastic memory in your mind and you forget all the pain there might have been involved along the way because of the wonderfulness of the end product, which is awesome, in and of itself.

Even if at some point something came over you and you did try to poke Mickey's eye out, stunning the crowd and workers around you.


Luckily, Mickey forgave you. He knows you're not yourself once you finish a long day like this.


But yes, in the end, you absolutely most definitely no question about it without a doubt, would do it all over again.

About a Girl Who Went 26.2 Miles on a Particularly Bad Day.

Not everyone can be great all the time. If they could, then great moments wouldn't be great moments.

Right?

They'd just be, well, moments.

What makes them great is that they happen so rarely, so rarely that they are amazing and unbelievable and that's what makes them great.

My great moment came after the marathon. Way, way after. When my husband said to me the Monday night after the marathon, when I still had my softball stuff on from playing a game earlier, "When I get home, do you wanna have a beer and toast our marathon?"

I replied, "Oh yeah. We didn't really celebrate that, did we?" Of course not. I cry almost every time I think about it.

"Nope. But we did share a great bag of chips afterward," he said. And I smiled.

So Monday night we toasted our finish.

The big, long, drawn-out finish. And it was great.

I know I'm supposed to be excited that I completed my first marathon. I know I should feel exhuberant and accomplished and I should be flitting out to my car as we speak to apply my 26.2 sticker to the back of my vehicle like I have dreamed of for so long.

But I'm not. And the sticker's not on, yet either.

I'm in limbo.

I can barely think about the race without crying and I can't stop thinking that I trained for so long (with a brief interlude in December) and it all boiled down to that? A just short of 6 hour finish? When I had planned on passing the finish line in just under 5?

I've begun and stopped and begun and stopped this race report too many times now to count. But here it goes.

The morning of the race started out the same as all races, we all wake up at o-dark-hundred (which in this case was 2:22 a.m. to get to the shuttle by 3:15)  I shower, have coffee, get ready, feel frazzled, at the last minute I can't find my I-Pod and can't find my hairband and my husband makes a mad dash back to the room for a last-minute scour for my I-Pod and comes up with nothing and we turn my bags upside down and inside out and the whole time my I-Pod is sitting in my front sweatshirt pocket. Which I am wearing.

You know, I'm that kind of frazzled.

But my friend Nicole and I have our tutus on and cute stripey socks, so things are all good. We are nervous but not too nervous and we are with Kirsten, her husband and Brooke and all is right with the world. We are having a blast together because there is nothing better than running a race with friends that you love and admire.

We make great use of the porta potties beforehand, drop off our stuff at bag check, take pictures, Facebook and Tweet and head to the corrals to get our start. Every time a corral leaves, fireworks shoot off overhead and I get goosebumps.

It is still dark. It is about 5:45.

I get teary-eyed as the race starts and the music pumps through me and I am listening to a song that yells, "Say goodbye to your weakness, so long to the RE-GRET!" and I promise myself I will start out much slower than I want because I want to save it all for the end when I'll need it most.

My only disappointment in the first 6 miles was the lack of porta potties and so I had to make my first road-side pitstop in a race ever in a fantastic clearing of trees that I'm convinced was put there just for me. The most amazing thing about running in a tutu (which I got for a dollar, mind you, at Claire's Boutique because the lady gave it to us as part of a promo even though it wasn't really included in the promo) is that it provides an amazing barrier between your tuckus and the outside viewing world.

I got my return on that investment for sure. (More to come on that in a little bit.)

Plus the roadside stop really cut back on the amount of time waiting for a porta-potty, which, by the way was just around the corner from our pitstop had I been a bit more patient (but how was I to know? Really!) but the line was super long so our option was better. And by "our," I mean my husband was with me and stood guard in the clearing.

Anyway.

Miles 6-12 went great. I was still conserving. I was hydrating and GU-ing.

By mile 13 we were operating on a decent split, we were set to come in under 5 hours if we went the same pace or even sped up which I was hoping. That's also about the time where I found my hairband I was so frantically searching for this morning. It was around my neck the whole time. Oops.

However, by mile 13, I got cramps and not the kind from any sort of muscle or side stitch, it's the girlie kind that you get when you have a visit from Mother Nature and I thought, "Uh oh."

But I was prepared and I didn't really think at that moment it was a big deal. I was sort of expecting it anyway.

Then by mile 16, things took a turn for the worse. Things wouldn't stay in place because other things were happening, and if you've had a baby you might know what I mean and if you didn't then you don't need to know what I mean anyway (but if you ever do have a baby, feel free to ask about what I mean, I can help you.) So then, I had to make another quick pitstop to assess the situation and well bad things were happening.

I couldn't keep things in place to keep running. There was just no way. Things kept shifting, then things kept leaking, I needed more supplies, and the shifting and leaking and whatnots and soforth forced me to have to walk. I did a run/walk thing until mile 18 but had to keep stopping at each medical tent for more "supplies."

I am trying to make it sound nonchalant and almost silly but to be perfectly honest, I was pretty devastated and frustrated about what was happening. Had I been a man that day, the race would have been a whole different story. At mile 16 I grew to hate my body and the comedy of errors that repeated itself along this 26.2 mile journey and by mile 18 I cried in defeat in a wet, chafey, godawfulcrampsbeyondbelief heap of a wife.

And that's when my husband took my hand and said, "I'm staying with you till the end, we'll do this." And I loved him with my whole heart and more.

The rest of the race went like this: the next mile marker, the next medical tent for "supplies," the next porta potty, the next mile marker, the next medical tent for "supplies," the next porta potty. That is how it went. We basically walked until mile 23 and now back to the tutu: that thin little tiny screen hid every sort of issue I was having from the waist down and I was thankful for its presence beyond belief. I have never been so thankful for wearing a tutu in my life. That thing pulled double duty. If I was going to feel like crap, at least I don't have to look like it! Right?

At mile 24 I ran out of "supplies."

Why?

Because it accidentally fell right into the toilet, THAT'S WHY!

I was devastated!! Staring over the toilet yelling, "NOOOOOOOO!" (Which might have sounded crazy to anyone in the Hollywood Studios restroom with me). There were no more "supplies" left and we were approaching 6 hours on the clock so there was no time anyway!

I switched to emergency mode and I wadded up the most giant wad of toilet paper, stuffed it in my pants and ran my ass off, chafing my whole being straight to the finish line in no quick manner but in such a manner to just make it under 6 hours and put myself out of misery.

And we did. By 3 minutes. Or 2. I don't remember.

It was the ugliest race I have ever run. Hell, it's the ugliest RUN I've ever run. And probably the ugliest race report you'll ever read, too, if you even made it this far. And I apologize if you are a man reading this but that was my reality that day and there really is no prettier way to put it except to say, well man, I had some problems.

It's so unfortunate that this is what turned out to be my first marathon experience because I had a picture in my mind of how I wanted to finish and wet britches with a wad of toilet paper the side of my head affixed to the inside of them was not in it. Not at all.

I was numb crossing the finish line and to be honest, I didn't even care to know the time. I found out the time on Twitter when someone tweeted it for me.

I got my medal that I didn't feel I deserved and I walked numbly to our meetup spot where I was sure everyone would have already left, but they didn't and I spotted them waiting for me and my heart burst open and I was thankful for friends.

And Kirsten got up and met me and I just hugged her hard and I cried. I'm pretty sure she knew that it had been ugly for me, which she did, and she just stood there hugging me. I love her with sparkles.

So. Much.

We all ran separately but we were all in it together. We all had our demons and somehow we all overcame them and finished. 26.2 has a way of stripping you down to your bare soul and sometimes the end turns out pretty and sometimes it doesn't.
After the race, I didn't even recant the tale to them too much except to just give the basic outline because everyone did so great and FINISHED A FREAKIN MARATHON! And it was time to celebrate. Right?

But I didn't feel like celebrating.

I want a do-over. More than anything, I want to do this over. The thing is, I don't really want to do this training all over again.

Then again, I can't have this be my first and only marathon experience.

See? I am so torn right now.

Is it a race-day curse? In Miami-Man, it was the flat tire. Here, it was my body.

GOD, I just want to finish strong! That is all I want! And with the sense of accomplishment, not the sense of defeat or the sense of "at least I finished."

Yes, I am too hard on myself. I know that. I can't help it. But it's because I KNOW I can do better than this.

A wise man once told me that come race day during a marathon, anything can happen at any mile. There is no way to know what will happen or when and it will almost always certainly surprise you. This same wise man also said that you have to run a marathon in order to know how to run a marathon.

I now know what that means.

(Among other things, it means planning the marathon day toward the end of the month!)

My mom came over yesterday and brought dinner. She knew how upset I was and after we ate, she made me take out all my medals from last year and hang them on my dresser mirror. I didn't win first place or any "place" for any of them, but they were all beautiful shiny accomplishments that when you look closer you see that they are actually memories attached to a ribbon that hangs around my neck. And wrapped up in each medal is a story of training, hours and hours of training, and family and struggle and failures and victories and finish lines and most certainly there is a story of the race itself and and the story of friends.

The shiny Mickey medal I got on Sunday tells a really, really long story about a girl who went 26.2 miles on a particularly bad day for her.

She crossed the finish line with her husband and at the finish line waiting for her were her friends.

I'll forever see that when I look at the Mickey medal and recant that tale that will most certainly begin with, "Oh, and THIS one...."

I am now planning a redemption race. And maybe even within the next three months so I don't completely lose the distance training. I just can't bring myself to end on that note. So if any of you have any suggestions on the when and the where, (there is the Georgia marathon in Atlanta in March perhaps...?) I might be up for it. It just needs to be cheap because I can't really afford to add more races to this year.

I'll keep you posted.

But today, I feel better.

In fact, tomorrow I might even put my sticker on. Who knows.

26.2 Aint for the Faint of Heart

Today, everyone pictured here is a marathoner.

Everyone pictured here completed 26.2 miles yesterday and a whole lot went on for each one of those miles for each one of those people.

I am so proud to have run with these guys, Brooke, Kirsten, Nicole, Tim, my husband.

I know you're looking for a race report and I promise there will be one. As soon as I get the courage to write it.

I had a rough race and I'm in agony in my mind over it. But for now I'm trying to look at all the good, the people I ran with, the great time we had before and after, and the cute little tutus (that turned out to be a Godsend.)

More later.

Thanks for all the wonderful encouraging tweets and comments on Facebook, I LOVE YOU.