Okay…I really thought this was going to be a short report, but something always seems to come up that I just simply must blab on and on about. So bear with me because I'll need some major sympathy pretty soon.

Things have pretty much sucked since Sept. 11around Mamma Gina's house. Mixed in with shock, grief, anger, fear, sadness, etc., I had a splitting headache on and off from about that time until the night before the marathon. I get ocular migraines, so that means my vision gets distorted, one side of my body goes numb at times, I can't concentrate on anything, and sometimes it just hurts so bad I want to puke. Excedrin Migraine works wonders for me, but I can't take it after about 4:00 or I'm up all night. (Do I want to be awake with a headache or awake without a headache? Uhh…) Plus, I was taking 2-4 every day and I thought that wasn't too swift, so I tried to tough it out for most of the three weeks. Not being able to work was making me more stressed because I was missing deadlines, which was just making things worse. Okay, enough whining…you get the idea (believe it or not, this is not the part where I need sympathy!) I say all of this to set the stage…things sucked and I was a mess. I really didn't feel much like running, which was freaking me out because I had a marathon coming up. If I hadn't already paid the entry fee, and if it wasn't the last race of the season, I would have bagged it.

Saturday - the day before the marathon. There's an expo at the Hilton and last year they were giving away free SmartWool socks (THE BEST socks) so we thought we'd check it out. I was also thinking about running with the Runners World pace groups so I wanted to listen to their little schpeal. I was shooting for 4:30 and Jeff Galloway was leading that group, so I thought it would be cool to run with him. More on that later. So, off we go to the expo. Now, keep in mind that things have sucked for 3 weeks, so I'm not exactly getting all dolled up to go to the expo. Hair is not fixed, just up in a ponytail, no makeup, big old baggy shorts and shirt on. We're wandering around the booths, and I stop to look at something while Jeff wanders off. I look up after a couple of minutes and see him talking to some blonde Barbie. I sort of rolled my eyes and thought, "Who's this bimbo?", figuring it was some classmate of his. I take my time wandering over. Jeff introduces her, and I recognize her name. The girl he dated for 2 years, a couple of years before we met. She and her husband decided to come up from Houston to do the Portland marathon. They did Chicago last year. She said she turned 30 and wanted to get in the best shape of her life, so they trained for Chicago in 10 weeks. She said to Jeff, "I just knew I would run into you here." Jeff said, "Why?" She: "Oh, I knew you lived here and I knew you were athletic." Whatever. Skinny, blonde, perfect makeup & hair, etc. I could very well have gone through the rest of my life without the pleasure of that introduction, thank you very much. Now, let me just say that I am normally fairly self assured, and don't really give much of a crap of what anyone thinks of me, and I am not RRRREEEEAAAWWWRRRR about other women. But for some reason this bimbo just knocked the wind right out of my sails. I was a wreck! Poor Jeff…he got the cold shoulder for a couple of hours. Now, ladies, you all know what I was thinking…I've GOT to beat her. No, not with my bag of expo freebies, in the race! I didn't think there was much chance of it, since she seemed to be in pretty good shape. Jeff assured me that she was not very athletic at all and couldn't run more than a mile when they were dating. I was not convinced. Under other circumstances, I would have blown the whole thing off (and maybe even chuckled about it), but I was a mess to begin with, so this was the WRONG time for my husband's ex-girlfriend to breeze into town. (Okay…I'm ready for that sympathy now.)

Sunday - race day. Everything went pretty smoothly, except we were both neurotic about forgetting something since our last two races were triathlons. At about 6:30, I started looking around for the RW pace signs and found the 4:30 group and Jeff Galloway a few minutes later. Good luck hug & kiss from hubby and he's off to line up with the speedier people. Now, Galloway had said we would be averaging a 10:18 pace, but that we would negative split the race so the first half would be slightly slower than 10:18/mile and the last half would be slightly faster. And he would, of course, do walk breaks since he's the walk break guru. He said they would be a little erratic the first few miles until things thinned out, but after that they would be every 4 or 5 minutes. Perfect, since I done my long runs at an easy 10:30-11:00ish pace.

And we're off. Apparently there was a moment of silence at the beginning but I had no idea. Crossed the line about 2 minutes after the gun. First couple of miles were in the 10:40 range. Pretty much what I expected. Walk breaks were pretty erratic. Galloway had one of those Nike Triax deals that is supposed to monitor your pace. He said it worked great in all his training runs. Apparently, it quit working after a couple of miles. Well, to make a long story slightly shorter, I averaged 9:53 minutes/mile for miles 3-11, lost sight of the group after an aid station, and got completely dropped by about mile 8. Something just ain't right there. Things went pretty much downhill from mile 12 or so. Average for ½ marathon: 10:17. Average for entire marathon: 11:24. 'Nuf said. The low point was definitely mile 22, at 14:15. The high point was forcing myself to run up the entire St. John's bridge ramp, which is about ½ mile of sheer torture at mile 17. There were only about 2 or 3 of us actually running up the ramp - most everyone else was walking.

I was shooting for 4:30, or at least to beat last year's time of 4:49 (and, after Saturday, to beat Barbie J). Ended up with a time of 4:58. I was really happy with my ½ marathon time, especially since it felt pretty easy. I think I will focus on that distance for the next year or so and then think about moving back up to marathon distance. We're hoping to do two ½ IM's next year (Pacific Crest and either Troika or Vineman), so I want to really focus on improving my speed for that distance.

Lessons learned:
1) Run on my own or with a friend, not with the pace groups. I never would have done it in the first place if it hadn't been Jeff Galloway leading my pace group (who, by the way, finished at 4:29). Regardless of how hyped up anything was, I needed to run my own race and not rely on someone else.
2) Even if it feels good (the first 8-10 miles at the under 10-minute pace felt very easy), don't start out too fast, even if you're running with "the experts".
3) Advil is good. I know there are many who say not to use Advil during a race, but I have never had problems with it. And I was having such severe knee pain during the 2nd half that it was either take some Advil or DNF.
4) Barbie can't run as fast as me. Beat her by an hour. Toward the end, I was in some serious pain. I had no idea if she was ahead of me or behind me and my only thought was that if she passed me, I was sprinting. Thank GOD I didn't have to J. Believe it or not, I'm terribly ashamed of my behavior. Well, mostly.

Thanks for reading!
Mamma G