I had an absolutely fabulous time running the Columbus Marathon today. The course, the volunteers, the bands, and all of the well wishers made it a very memorable experience. I got a late start getting out of the house this morning and got down to the race with with only ten minutes to spare. That's okay though because I didn't need a whole bunch of layers to keep warm while waiting in the 32 degrees temperature. It took about 10 minutes to actually cross the starting line after the start of the race. It was absolutely packed with 14,000 runners and walkers, which made the first couple of miles "interesting" to navigate. It was so crowded that it was difficult to go around people (primarily because I had to watch out for people going around me at the same time).
Laela, Miranda, and Indy came out to cheer for me several times on the route. They made some great signs. "Bukkit at Mile 26.2" "Zombies Behind You!" "Hurry up, we want beer and wings" Miranda even ran the last 0.2 miles and crossed the finish line with me.
Thanks to everyone for contributing to the playlist that Laela compiled for the race today. I don't know how she managed to do it, but the songs were arranged in such a way that every time I needed a little pickup or boost I got just what I needed. Some of the choices were quite funny and I had a few times that I laughed so hard that other runners were turning around to look at me.
I couldn't have done it without everyone's support. Thanks to Kristi for logging a ton of training miles with me over the summer and for coming down to cheer me on at the finish line. Last but not least, thanks to Laela and Miranda for putting up with all of the training runs I had to do and for rescheduling just about everything on Sundays around my long runs.
I'm going to take a few days off and then get back to it at the end of the week. (I've already got a 10k scheduled for next weekend)
