Finally, after several years of jogging and training for long distance running I was able to run my first Marathon! I had been training with Trisha and Irene last year to jog the Santa Rosa Marathon, but in the month prior I got severely painful shin splints and had to stop jogging for almost six months. In anticipation of the event Amanda and Trisha got me a gift certificate to iTunes which I'd never used before to actually buy music. It was perfect- I was up late the night before the marathon downloading all my "must have" favorite songs. My playlist was ready to go for my jog!
Chuck was actually here earlier in the week, but he and Emily had to head to central California for her sister's wedding. My Dad drove down Friday from Boise, straight through! It was definitely too much driving for one day, but he did it. Dad stayed the night in the spare room and the next day Mom flew in from Salt Lake to the Oakland airport where I picked her up.
Sunday morning came quick. I grabbed all my gear, made sure my iPhone was charged up and headed to Santa Rosa for the marathon. I was pretty anxious and nervous. I started out jogging with Jeff, but he was going about a 9 minute 30 second pace per mile and that was about a minute faster than I wanted to go. So I slowed up and jogged my own pace. About mile 3 I came across my friend Irene who was doing the half marathon. It was perfect- she was doing a slower reasonable pace so we jogged together until about mile 9. It was really nice having a jogging friend to keep me on track. After mile 9, it was just me and "Sheila" the name I gave my iPhone's "Runkeeper" voice that tells me audibly my distance and pace every mile. I was worried for Sheila, I wasn't sure her battery would survive a full marathon!
The end of the race was awesome. As I rounded out mile 25 I saw my Dad up on the overpass and my Mom was down on the path with camera ready. As I approached they cheered me on and gave me encouragement for the last mile. Then I looped back towards the last bit only to see my Mom running ahead trying to beat me to the finish line so she could get a picture, I yelled over at her "Good Luck!". As I came through the finish line area on my left was Amanda, Trisha, Maureen, Jeff and Trisha's boys Lance and Dominick yelling for me. Immediately after on my right was Jaime with her boys Cooper and Chace also cheering me on and prepared with refreshments for me, too! It was such an awesome experience; I can't thank all my friends and family enough for showing me such support! Amanda had a goody bag with a head lamp (because I've been jogging at times where there isn't light and I needed one!), new jogging shorts a congratulatory card and some gel packs for jogging. Way cool!
Jogging for over four hours gives you time to think. And one of the things I thought about a lot of this jog was the quote I posted to facebook from after the jog. "For me, in life as in jogging, it's not about the distance, the speed, or even if you finish the race, it's about the people you spend it with." While I'm thrilled that I'm now a "Marathoner" and I ran it in just under ten minute miles on average, and I finished the race in four hours twenty three minutes, the best part of it all was when I was jogging with my friend Irene.
I'm so lucky to be able to do so many different activities, whether it's traveling, jogging, video games, motorcycle riding, whatever it is I'm doing - for me it's all about the people I spend my time with.
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