With a race packet in hand and our signs all made, the two older girls and I loaded up the car around 4:00 on Saturday afternoon and we left. We stopped to eat dinner together about an hour from Cincinnati and then we arrived at our hotel around 9:30. We would have a really early morning so we looked over all of the directions to make sure that we knew where we were going and laid everything out for the next morning and then we went to bed early. Sunday would be a big day!!
+++
On Sunday morning, the alarms went off at 5:00 a.m. and we were out the door and walking towards the start line by 5:30. It was only 39 degrees when we left the hotel lobby. Brrr! (One advantage to walking 1.5 miles to the start line is that it helps get you warmed up a little).
But what a view as we crossed the bridge and the sun was just starting to come up.
Pen D was right outside the city carousel so we stood there with Marissa while she waited for a bathroom and then got into her corral and awaited her 6:40 a.m. start time. We were all so nervous...and cold!! LOL
But soon enough, it was time. We said some quick prayers together and then she entered the corral and waited for the gun to go off.
After she ran out of our line of sight, we walked over to where we could see the finish line and then we started plotting out where we could go to wait and to watch for her.
From the start line, the course would take them a couple blocks down the road and then they would cross over a bridge into KY where they would run along the south side of the river and then they would cross back across the river where they would come back into OH. It would make a five mile square almost and a lot of those first nine miles were up hill. Morgan and I decided that we would walk over to the five mile point and stand there and wait for her to run by. Thankfully we were able to track her on our phones so we knew when she would be coming past. She said she saw our bright neon signs as she was running towards us and that made her smile...and run faster. Only five miles in and she was feeling really good.
As soon as she ran past us, Morgan and I pulled out the map to see where we should go next. But unfortunately, the course would take the runners straight east for about 11 miles and there wasn't anyway that we would be able to walk to one of those checkpoints faster than she was running so we realized sadly that our only option would be to walk to one of the points at miles 23-26. We were both so disappointed as we were hoping that we'd be able to encourage her and to cheer her on at several different points. We finally decided to just walk to mile #25 and just sit until she ran past. (Morgan did get a text from one of Marissa's college friends who made the drive over from Indy that morning and had driven to mile #10 so we were so thankful that Marissa would have someone there since we couldn't be).
After finding a spot in the sun, we just camped out there together. Where we were sitting was where the mini marathon runners would join back on the course with the full marathon runners so as soon as we arrived to that spot, the first mini runners were coming by. It was entertaining to see all of the original signs from spectators and the various costumes that some of the mini runners were wearing.
And two hours later, I received a notification from the app that Marissa was at the 13.1 mark. Praise the Lord, she was half-way done...and still keeping up a good pace.
An hour later, she had completed 19.2 miles and was at 3:05.22. The farthest that she had ever run in her training (due to only having two months of training time) was 17 miles. I saw on my phone that she was still running 10 minute miles when she was running, but she was also walking some. I just really started praying that God would not only give her the strength to finish the race, but that he would protect her from any injuries. (Not to take away from her struggles at all, but being a spectator and not knowing how someone is really doing isn't an easy thing either. It was a really long wait as we watched those last miles tick by!) If she could keep up the same pace for those final seven miles, she would finish right around 11:00 and 4:18 for her expected finish time.
After that point, things really seemed to slow down. Marissa was still running and walking in combination and when she was running, she kept a good pace. We just didn't know how much walking she was doing and that would definitely slow things down the more she walked. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the gap between us on our phones began to get smaller and smaller and we finally saw that she was crossing under the last bridge and we should be able to actually see her soon. Sure enough, just coming into our line of vision, we could see her running and as she got closer, Morgan and I held up our bright neon yellow signs and started jumping up and down. You could see the exact moment that Marissa saw us. Her whole demeanor changed and she started running just a little faster. She was smiling but she was also fighting tears. You could just see the pain in her face...and then she just made a beeline right over to Morgan and gave her the biggest hug.
"Where WERE you? I've been looking for you at every mile marker" and then we hugged more, told her that she only had one mile to go... she was almost there...and she was off one last time.
Since we couldn't walk on the road and interfere with other runners, it took us a little longer to get through the large crowds and to make it past the finish line to where the families could reunite, but we did finally make it to her. Wow! What a relief for all of us. She made it!! She really truly made it!! Praise the Lord.
This is how we found her...just sitting on the park bench. She said that she didn't feel "tired" as much as that she felt sick and her legs just hurt and the bottoms of her feet felt raw.
I think that at this point, her body just was in shock to some extent and she started shaking a little. But after a few minutes, she was quickly able to gather herself again.
She was finally able to drink a little more, and then she said that she was ready to take some pictures.
Her goal of running a marathon has now been met. Her words at that time were "I am NEVER doing that again!!" And she may never do it again, but that's okay as she can say that she's done it once. (But she has already told us that she might do another because she knows she can run it faster!)
She finished with a great beginning time of 4:25.56!
After finishing the marathon, the second hardest part of our day was getting back to our hotel. It was about 11:40 at this point and we had scheduled a late check-out for 1:00, but we still had to walk 1.5 miles up a flight of stairs, across the bridge and then several blocks back to our hotel and the same walk that only took 25 minutes earlier that morning was now going to take a lot longer. As we were just leaving the park, they had physical therapists lined up and they were offering to help the runners stretch and to look at injuries. One of the PT came over to Marissa and asked her if she wanted him to stretch her out and she replied, "No thank you. I'm fine". As she continued walking, you should have seen the look on his face as he watched her walk by. He was looking at her slow walk and clearly he did not agree that she was fine. Oh well. At that point, she just wanted to start walking back to the hotel so we passed them all by. We took it really slow back to the hotel, but the bottoms of her feet hurt so badly that it made it really difficult to keep walking. We did make it back in time to get checked out of our room and to get everything packed back into the car all before 1:00. And then we started the long drive home...
Thank you Cincinnati. It was fun. We'd love to come back again but maybe next time, we'll drive through your beautiful downtown instead of running. LOL
+++
Here are the final stats for the day:
No comments:
Post a Comment