Well, if you asked me if I be writing this on mile 18, I would have laughed and said I have nothing good to reflect on. Luckily, I sit here with a lot of amazing things to look back on.

Before I get into the actual race, I want to give a quick background on why I started running. It all started in high school when I wanted to lose weight before college. I was large, 250 pounds of large. From playing football, I was into powerlifting, but nutrition and cardio was not my focus. That all changed.

Long story short (I’ll write a whole blog post on how I got into running), I ran 10 minutes a day and cleaned up my diet, lost the weight and now can say I turned 10 minutes into 3 hours and 19 minutes of running.

With my move to Tennessee, I joined an amazing group in the Hendersonville Running Club. In the blink of an eye I found myself running 20 miles on our Saturday long runs. You can read how/why I signed up here.

Onto Carmel…

I first want to acknowledge all of the support I had. My family and friends from the running club are the ones who pushed me to do this race with all my heart.

We (Alison, Rob, and Leigh), left Friday morning. Being able to travel and drive up with a group made me feel so much more comfortable for my first race. It’s hard to express my appreciation for the generosity but it was only right to get everyone some Taziki’s at our St. Matthew’s location. Tons of great gyros, hummus, taziki’s dip, etc.

After lunch, we got to the expo, got our gear, and then went to dinner with the rest of the running club (30 of us!). The dinner was nice, quiet, and relaxing. Everyone was calm and collected and it almost felt like a pregame dinner. Talking with some friends definitely kept my nerves in check and took my mind off the race.

I slept OK the night before, not my greatest but I wasn’t expecting to get a full night’s rest. Right, when I woke up I felt queasy. “What the heck am I doing?” “What if I don’t finish??!!”

After taking a good look at myself in the mirror, a voice in my head reminded me how hard I trained for this. All of the early Saturday mornings long runs, weekday runs, training, nutrition, it was time for it to pay off.

I ran with who I would say one of, if not the best running mentors I’ve had, Skip. We ran the first 8-9 miles together at a 7:50-7:40 pace. I was feeling strong as we ended up losing each other after those first couples of miles.

What really messed with my mind was the 13.1 mile marker where the course brought us past the finish line, where the half marathon runners and marathon runners split. At first, I honestly thought I made the wrong turn or something and had a mini-heart attack. But then I saw a sign pointing marathon to the left.

Halfway seemed so close but so far.

I kept on my way with a 7:30 pace. It was on mile 16 where I made a HUGE mistake. I’ve been eating animal crackers and chocolate on my long runs and didn’t want to mess up my routine, so I had them in my belt. Until mile 16.

I went to get some nice reeses and just as I reach into the bag, I lose all of animal crackers and candy besides two animal crackers and one piece of candy. Great. I’m about to suck hard.

I felt really good mile 17-20. But then that wall started to come into play. Those last 6 miles were rough man, really rough. I’ve never encountered something so mentally and physically challenging.

Mind One = stop running your tired.

Mind Two= dude if you quit now, you’ll be ashamed.

I kept going at my 7:30 or so pace as the wind got worse and worse. Something that helped get me through those last couple miles was being able to reflect on how blessed I am to of had the opportunity to feel like complete crap.

But in all seriousness, I did reflect on a lot of positive things during my last couple miles. Some of those include my support group, being able to travel to another state and run a race, having my health, and just overall having a nice life to live. I’m lucky enough to have a great group of friends who support me and push me to my very best. That’s not something everyone has, and I cherish, and always will cherish the amazing friends I’ve met these past 3 months.

It wasn’t all positive thoughts though, as much as I wish it was. Those last two miles were killer. I thought I would be hyped up and run fast. Ha! I was like a car with it’s gas light on. Literally I was trying to run faster but I couldn’t.

Seeing that finish line gave me so many mixed emotions. After crossing the line I got my medal, some chocolate milk, and a bag of food but I knew it was important to keep my legs moving. I did that for one minute and then felt too dizzy all of a sudden. I knew I wanted to get my legs iced so I went into the medical tent.

As I was sitting down getting my legs wrapped, I felt dizzy and honestly couldn’t talk much because my chest was so sore. It took me probably a good 10 minutes to collect myself and stand up. It was probably the smell of the pancakes that brought me on my feet.

Alright, so my big takeaways:

1. You get what you put in. Train hard, it will pay off. I see this applying to almost, if not everything in life.
2.  Embracing the suck is awful during a run, but makes you stronger after.
3. Anything is possible. Corny but true. Don’t think you can’t do anything. I didn’t think I could run a marathon.
4. The people you spend time with have a big impact on your life. Not just running. Life overall.
5. Pancakes after 26.2 miles are amazing.
6. I will be running more marathons in the near future.

Now in one sentence:

I ran a marathon because of the great people I’ve become friends with and I will train harder, focus more, and perform better in my next one.