Race Day. I woke up at 3:45am, thankfully the people above me in the hotel were stomping around, so that I couldn't sleep in. Mark dropped me off at the team hotel at 4:45am. We had breakfast and loaded the buses to the start line. We got to the start line at around 5:45am, and it was about 30 degrees. We had about 45 minutes to use the restroom and get our gear bags check, meaning we had to check everything we weren't going to run with (including our jackets). So at 6:30am we were standing in our corrals (Which is how you start when you have thousands of people, you group them into about 1000 people and put them in corrals, and then each corral has a different start time). Me and my friend Rita we in corral 29 out of 30. We wanted to be at the back, because it gets pretty intense in the front. We didn't cross the start line until 8:30 although the race officially started at 7:30. The chip on our shoe doesn't start counting until we cross the line.
And we're off. When we crossed the finish line we had been standing without our jackets for 2 hours, so needless to say we couldn't feel anything waist done. We took off on our nice jog like we had been practicing for about 6 1/2 months. About 2 miles in we could finally feel our feet and so we stopped and stretched. Soon after we went through our first water stop, and since my doctor told me to be really careful not to get dehydrated, I took 2 water cups at each water stop. Well about 10 minutes later, right before the 3 miles mark I had to take my first bathroom break. I said good-bye to Rita and went to stand in line for 15 minutes. This would be the first of 7 bathroom breaks during my 13 miles, I proabbly set a record. The first 5 miles or so were nice and I was just trotting along like during all mytrainings. It was so neat to have tons of people lining the streets cheering for you. HOwever, I soons tarted getting really hungry since we had breakfast at 4:45 and it was about 9:30. Luckily, a restrurant was handing out breakfast burriots. I was so excited to have something to eat. While I was walking down the street eating my breakfast burrito, woudln't you know, my coach appears. She was curious as to why I was eating, and I just laughed. I went ahead and walked/ran the next 3 miles with her, she was our pace coach. Soon, she had to leave and go back to get one of my teammates. So I decided to just take it easy and enjoy the rest of the 5 miles. I had a really nice walk and took it all in. I met some really nice TNT people from all over the country.
I finished at about 3 1/2 hours (remembering that about an hour of that was standing in line at the bathroom). It was really nice to finish, and I really felt good and didn't feel like I overdid it or was unsafe at all. I had so much fun, and I am already planning on doing TNT again so I can finally run my full marathon.
After the race Mark amazingly found me about the hundreds of thousands of people. It was like bingefest at the finish line, they were handing you boxes of all kinds of food, it was disgusting. It was really fun to get to see all my teammates (Well the one who had finished). Here are some pictures of the day...
My friend Rita and I in our corral about 10 minutes before we crossed the start line.
My TNT Jersey. This is the back. All the ribbons are those who have fought cancer. I asked everyone who donated money or supported me to put the names of those I could run in mmory or honor of.
After the finish line, when Mark amazingly found me. Under my super cool blanket is my boxof food. This is one of those sun blankets so I don't cool down too quickly, I was honestly just cold the whole race until I crossed the fnish line and got the blanket.
Mark taking a picture of my medal. My shirt says bump for my mom. She says that I trained for the full marathon but hit a bump in the road.
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