Big D Texas Marathon

Well I have completed my first marathon. On Sunday I ran Big D Texas Marathon. I started the morning off at 5:30 a.m. First thing I did in the morning was check the weather. It was 71 degrees, 89% humidity and 18mph wind. No my favorite weather. I got all dressed and gathered my gear that I had laid out the night before. My husband and I left the house at 6:00 a.m. I ate my pre race breakfast on the way to the race. I had a peanut butter cliff bar, half a banana, and 16 oz of water. We arrived at fair park around 6:45. The place was already packed with cars. Oh yeah and we stopped at McDonalds before we got there so I could make one last stop at the restroom. That was a good idea by the way. We just walked around for a while and then made our way close to the finish line. I wanted to get towards the front of the line since they were using gun time versus chip time. My family was watching at the starting line when the gun fired at 8:00 am. My goal was to start off at about 9:30 pace and then after mile three pick it up to my pace of 9:06. I wanted to have a negative split from the first half. Well lets just say that things didn't go as planned. I started the race off way too fast. At the 5 K mark I was at 26:30. Which was way too fast. Here were my splits:

First Half..........2:10:03

Second Half .....2:44:13

Finish Time .....4:54:16

I placed 21/60 in my age category and 320/699 overall. Well at least I was faster than half of the people. The marathon was very hard. It was a lot tougher than I expected. During training I felt wonderful, was hardly out of breath. Not during this race. I knew at mile 6 that it was going to be difficult. I think it was a combination of things that made it tough. It was hot, humid and windy. The course was difficult there were a lot of hills. It didn't help either that I started out too fast. That is why most people say to not set a time limit on your first marathon and just run it and have fun. Well I tried too hard in the first half and that made the second half difficult. I hit the wall (yeah that wall that they talk about is real) at mile 15.5. I was able to see all my family at that mile marker and I just wanted to get in the car with them and go home. They motivated me and of course I kept going. At the finish line about 0.2 miles left my husband ran with me. Right before the finish line my 4 year old son came up and ran across the finish line. That was the sweetest thing. When we crossed the finished line they gave me my medal. My son was asking where is medal was so I had to give him mine. The race was very challenging and just goes to prove that you never know what a race is going to be like until you are there doing it. I look forward to running my next marathon. Next time I think I will train on hills. I think that was what I was lacking in this training program. There are not a lot of hills around my house to train on so I will have to go someplace else. I wanted to list my gear I raced with for future races.

Gear:

Iphone and holder

Brooks pink tank top

Brooks pink skort

Asics Limited Edition Gel Kayano 17

Hand held water bottle

Headphones

Energy Bloks

Sport Beans