Marathon #9 is officially in the books. I surprised myself with the desire to run another marathon. I think I wanted to see if my body was still capable of it. I ran 700 miles during my training program, lots of really early Saturday morning runs before soccer practice or vacation days to squeeze those miles in. I made it through the training healthy and strong. Unfortunately, I caught a cold two days before the race. I've never raced anything longer than a 5k while under the weather. I was at a loss on what to do. But after all those training miles, there was no other choice but to lace up my shoes and pray for the best. It was miserable. The weather was less than ideal, very warm and humid. At mile 9, my heartrate started elevating and I wasn't able to keep it under control even by considerably slowing my pace. At mile 12, I started thinking about what it would be like to drop out of the race. At mile 19, I had to start walking. I hate walking in a race. But I figured I could walk to the finish if I had to, until I figured out how long that would take. At mile 20 I had a beer, it was disgusting. At mile 23 or so I realized that I could run to the finish line, so I gutted it out. As I crossed the finish line I had a very difficult time catching my breath, it was a pretty scary few moments, but thankfully I was able to get it under control.
In the end my time was terrible, 24+ minutes slower than what I was trained for. I'm not sure how much of that was related to my cold or the weather. But together it made for a very miserable day. In the end I am happy that I gutted it out on the course, but I don't think I will ever try to race while under the weather again.
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