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.