Rhythmic Walkers

If you read Heathers post yesterday you would know that for a little less than half of the marathon we had to walk.  Unfortunately Heather's knee had no interest in running this race.  Although she was more than prepared sometimes our bodies just won't allow us to achieve what we would like.

When we first signed up for this race Heather told me that she would sign up if I promised to run it with her.  She wanted to run it in the first place but this was her way of making me sign up too.  So I signed up and agreed to make her training plan as well as coach her through the race.  I decided that Heather and I could just use the same training plan.  This was partly due to my laziness of making two plans.  Anyways, I realize now that for a beginner marathoner she did not need to log so many miles.  I feel like this may have attributed to her knee problems. 

Moving on, I am not going to re-cap entirely the whole marathon because you heard most of it from Heather yesterday.  What I would like to add is that this was my first walk/run marathon and I will say that it is just as hard and painful as running one.  When you are walking, you will log much more time on your legs.  Mentally it is exhausting if you actually think about the time it will take you to finish.  In the beginning of the race both Heather and I were feeling great.  My legs were rested and I was ready to fly.  When Heather's knee pain set in I could see her discouragement.  She kept going and I kept trying to keep things positive.

It was when the pain was to hard to bare that I began to feel helpless.  In my head I prayed and prayed that her pain would be taken away so she could run this marathon.  Her knee pain was only getting worse.  I will be honest, when the realization set in about what was happening I thought for a moment that I could just go.  I was feeling good my legs wanted to run but I knew that I could not leave her side.  Emotionally it would have been to hard for her to finish alone and she would quit.

At that moment I put all of my ideas/excitement of what this marathon could be aside and put all of my hopes and positive energy into helping her get through this.  She is my sister and I love her dearly, and I know she would have done the same for me.  No marathon PR is stronger than a bond with your family.  I love her so much and am so proud of what she has accomplished.  She is the strongest woman I know and hands down this was my best marathon yet! I will never forget this race and I wouldn't have ran it any other way.

Let me just say that I have never received so many compliments on a race before.  People loved us!  One because we were totally matching, Two we had the best Rhythmic walk ever and Three because people could see how much fun we were having.  We even were complimented on our great bums :)

Can't you just tell we were powering through it....?  Below you can see our faces like "What??  This is it?" Ha!

Heather needed to make a quick call to her husband who just finished his FIRST marathon in 3:24!  He was smokin!

Really the walk we were going for was the walk from the old TV show Kath and Kim.  Did you ever watch it?  It was only on air for two seasons but I totally loved that show.  So funny!

Heather, Jen and Bryan it was a blast!!  Thanks for the great memories!

Now I have 4 weeks off before I start my training for ING NYC Marathon! Woohoo!

XX
Sarah

PS Yes I may have taken screen shots of these pix ;)  Pls don't think I am a bad person.

My Race

Me and Sarah walking together .  We were side by side the whole time.

This is how my race went down.  It started raining.  Which I was totally fine with.  Heck.... I trained in the rain all the time.  I could deal with windy, rainy conditions.  A knee pain I could not handle.  My knee started to act up right around the time I ran the Stillwater Half Marathon.  It was sort of hurting about a week before Stillwater, but I never gave it a rest.  I consider myself a pretty tough person and thought I would just be able to run through the pain.  I did rest it for the entire week before Grandma's.  And as many of you know got some fancy tape put on it.  I really was feeling good, and thought I was going to run this marathon strong and have a great time. I did have a great time but wish that I could have run it stronger.  Here is the breakdown...

Results

5:32:27

12:42 pace

Miles 1-5  Felt GREAT.  Loved all the great energy.  No knee pain.  Was happy to be running with one of my best friends.

Mile 5-15  My knee was starting to ache a little.  Right when I started to feel it I told Sarah lets run 9mins walk 1min.  I would stay on top of the pain.  Give it a little break and kept telling myself it would be fine.  Well as the miles went on it started to hurt a little more and a little more.  Around mile 9 or 10 my friend Diane ran by me.  She talked to me a little and that was the first moment that I could feel the tears building up.  This lady really helped me a ton during my training season and I was sad that I couldn't keep up with her.  She then ran on.  I pushed the sad feelings aside and just tried to keep the positive energy coming.

Mile 16-26.2  By mile 16 my knee would not bend when I would stop to do my minute walk.  It was harder to change back and forth between running and walking.  I talked to my amazing coach...aka.. Sarah and we decided that it would be best just to walk the rest.  Let me tell you friends that walking is MUCH harder then running.  You think 10 miles sounds long running.  Well walking it seems even farther.  But I needed to listen to my body and it was telling me to stop running.

We walked as fast as we could.  Talked about everything.  Laughed about tons.  Saw some crazy people.  Some hurt people.  And had lots of people comment on the speed we were walking.  I was going to walk the fastest I could if I couldn't run it.  

We finished like ROCK STARS!!!!  I had a really really great time.  It wasn't until that night that the emotions and frustration set in.  I was so upset with myself.  Why couldn't I just run through the pain.  All the training that I had done and then couldn't even run all of it.  Why did my knee have to hurt??  Why couldn't it have been the crazy lady dressed like a bird that had knee problems?  Tears came and it felt good.  Always feels good to get a good cry in right??  

I couldn't have asked for a better coach that day.  Sarah continued to tell me that I was doing GREAT and that it didn't matter one bit if we had to walk it.  She told me over and over again that the miles were going to fly by.  And they did cause I was with her.  Thanks Sarah.  I love you.  And Jen I love you to and I know that if I needed you there you would be right by my side as well.

What do they say??  What doesnt kill you will make you stronger??  Well this challenge for sure has made me stronger.  I will run another marathon.  And I will be stronger next time because of this one.

This is the awesome video that Bryan took of us crossing the finish line!  They called us The Rhythmic Walkers.

-Heather

My day

I started my day out thinking this will be the last day that I drink a diet soda until after the marathon.  So in honor of this day I decided to have one on my morning school run.  It was good.  

After the school run my wonderful babysitter came over so that I could work out.  Went to Kinetic Edge.  It was super hard like always.  Love it there.

Since my knee is still bugging a little, my big sis told me it might be my shoes.  So headed down to Run and Fun and of course got some new shoes.  I told them about my pain as well and they think that I have runners knee from overuse and sold me some kind of knee wrap thing.   Anyone else use one?? Does it really help?

Since the weather is so hot right now... which I love... I picked up my boys and headed to the pool.  My wonderful niece Sabrina is here for a while and I couldn't be more thrilled.  Love this girl and it was a great afternoon hanging with her doing nothing but enjoying the weather.  Since the race is so soon I am really trying to enjoy not running so much.  I am not sure why some people think it is so hard to just rest!   I love it.

My evening was filled with dance and then I went to a Stretch Intervention.  I took pictures too but my battery died as I was uploading the pictures so you will all have to wait until Friday to see what that was all about.  I am sure you will all be dying to know how it went.  

I am really hoping that my knee gets better before the big day.  When I ran Saturday I went 9 miles and it was a little painful.  Not bad where I could not run on it but enough pain that I would not want to run 26 miles like that.  Anyone else have runners knee??  Any good tips or tricks I should know about?

-Heather

And I decided that I am not giving up diet soda.  Will limit it as I usually do, just now I am going to try to drink even more water than normal during the day.