My First Marathon (Reflections)

It's Fall, that means I dye my hair darker. I'm just festive like that.

Sunday 10/30, I ran my first marathon.
I'll post a recap later, but I want to get down ALL of the events leading up to it before I forget.
The week leading up to the marathon was supposed to be relaxation and carb loading, with a couple easy runs peppered in. It was anything but.
We had two pretty major family things happen, one on my side and one on my husbands, that kind of left the marathon in the back of my mind, with so much else to focus on.
I didn't really intend to carb load, as in I wasn't going to do difficult math problems calculating carb ratios etc...
I did plan to eat more carbs a couple days leading up to the race though. What actually happened is all of the stress really did a number on my appetite and I had to force myself to eat the little bit that I did.
Race morning was COLD. I had set my alarm for 4:45 am with intentions to leave around 5:45 for the 7 am start time. I overslept. I woke up and my phone said it was 5:27, I almost died!
I drank my coffee threw on my clothes and got to the race. I waited in the (thankfully not too long line) for the port-o-potty and had to hop one of those barriers to get to the start.
I didn't feel like running. I wasn't nervous, excited, or even tired. I just didn't want to run. I think all of the emotionally draining events from the week just left too mentally tired to think about running 26.2 miles.
I got it together though and started feeling pretty good a few miles in.
More on that when I do the recap.

After the race I left pretty quickly, I had to take my son to a birthday party.
I was sore and I'm still sore. I have never been in so much pain from running.
My right knee hurts, when I bend it, it takes a couple minutes to straighten it back out. My ankles hurt, even my wrist hurts from the way I was carrying my water bottle the whole time.
I definitely did not anticipate hurting this much. Trick-or-Treating with the kids will definitely be a "treat" for me later on. Having kids is awesome, it means I get to trick-or-treat again and I get to dress them up however I want!


Happy Halloween!