Ogden Marathon 2009

Eh. That's my description of today. I have mixed feelings of today. I'll begin with the good.
The Good

Heidi and I stayed at her sister's house last night who lives 10 minutes north of the finish line, so that was nice. We set 5 alarms between the 3 of us and got up at 4:00AM, ate my traditional PB&J (all natural peanut butter and all fruit/no sugar or corn syrup jelly, and on my whole wheat bread, I'm pretty anal about the prerace meal.) and we took off about 4:30. Caught up with some great ladies - Heidi T who was running her first half marathon and did fantastic!, and Jessica and Heidi who ran their first full marathons.

The bus ride up was great, no issues, it was warm and nice to talk. The starting line was cold, but not horrible. This lady really had the right idea. Race got started and off we went. I ran into a friend of mine Jonathon who has run dozens of marathons. He was shooting for the same goal time I was so we ran together most of the race. Things were going great up until about mile 18 when my legs started to tighten up.

The Bad.
Now this typically happens to me and while I was hoping to avoid it I can deal with it. By this time I was 3-4 minutes under the pace I needed to be at, so that was a good thing, I had room to slow down if I needed it.

The Ugly.
Then mile 20 happened (might have been 19, can't remember). So now am I not only dealing with tight sore legs I am SUPER sick to my stomach. All I wanted to do was throw up. I thought for sure I would and kind of hoped to in hopes of feeling better, but it just never came and I wasnt sure about purging. So for the next 3 miles I watched my time in the bank run out and was faced with running 8 minute miles to the end if I wanted my 3:30. Just was not gonna happen. I was running closer to 8:30-9:00 miles and just so sick. I was angry and negative those last 3 miles just so completely 100% wanting to get this over with. Oh, the nausea was horrible. Worst part is I just do not know what brought it on, so not sure how to prevent it next time (no issues like that in the first 2 marathons). I did my best, got passed by a lot of people I didn't think should be passing me, and made it to the finish. I finished in 3:38 which is a 3 minute PR, and qualified for the Boston Marathon. No, I don't plan on running it -unless that is any of you know of free airfare to Boston :) - it's just more a status thing. Heidi and Jessica and I at the finish. I'm so proud of these girls! They've both worked real hard and had great attitudes about the day after. So now the task at hand is recovering. I have a triathlon in 2 weeks I'm entered elite in, so hopefully my body comes back fast!