First Marathon in the books!

On September 21st I ran my first marathon. It was the US Air Force Marathon in Dayton, Ohio.

It's been almost a week, and I've taken the time to sort of reflect on the whole experience, the training, my performance, and finishing the 26.2 miles.

Right after I had my 20 mile run, I think I ran 30 miles total in the following 3 weeks. 20 of that was in the week following. This was due to coming down with Cellulitis, an infection of the muscle tissue in my leg by my hip. I was told one week before the marathon that I would not be able to run it. Needless to say I was quite disappointed. Then some sort of miracle occurred and my doctor cleared me to run just 5 days before the marathon. I was skeptical, but when on and did it anyway.

The full 26.2 was difficult, there was no doubt about it. At mile 12 there was a very sharp pain in my left knee. Due to my own misconception that they would pull me out of the race if I went to the medical tent I hobbled along walking and very very lightly jogging until about mile 17 when I had to stop. Thankfully they gave me some NSAID's and Tylenol and by mile 19 I was running again. Had I known this before hand, I would have stopped at mile 12 and not walked for almost 5 miles.

The bonus to this is I never did hit a wall. In fact, it got easier at mile 20, and even easier from mile 23 on.

I finished the race in 5:37:54. I missed my mark by almost an hour. Partially due to the knee pain, and also, most likely from the anti-biotics that were in my system and the attack on my muscles from fighting the Cellulitis.

I've always heard that running a marathon, or at least training for one, changes you in some way, and that if it was easy every one would do it. I'll be honest here when I say, I don't feel particularly changed, nor do I feel that particularly special for finishing the race. 3,000 other people ran this particular marathon, and millions of people do so every year, so to me, completing one isn't really as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

Don't get me wrong, when you finish, there is no feeling in the world like it. Despite the flawed race I ran, the feeling was better than the half-marathon I PR'd a month before. And despite the fact that I told myself that I probably wasn't going to take the time to train for another, based on the feeling you get when you finish, I will be doing another one, maybe two next year.