I'm a marathoner!!!!!

Prove that I did get up really early on race day.

At 3:18 no less than 3 alarms went off. I was worried I'd oversleep but I was awake at 3:05.
This gave me some time to get dressed in silence like I'm used to at home. Once I had everything but the shoes on I woke my room mate and she had the bathroom all to herself.

A very quiet group met downstairs at 4am and took to the bus.

Little warmup walk (17 minutes) and then it was time to stand in line for the Porta-Potties.

Lesson learned in line, pick the line with the most males. They take less time to pee!



Took us only 20 minutes to make it to the head of the line. By then it was 6:30 and time to go to our corral, we were #23.






The view from behind the pack!

We heard lot's of talking and then the gun went off and our throng started moving.
I crossed the start line hands in the air hoping I'd get my picture taken when I was still 'fresh'. So much purple jerseys in front of me! It was amazing.
I started off with my team mate D. She had intended to do the full marathon but had gotten sick so she was just going to do the half.
Rock and Roll supposedly has bands at every mile so by the time we hit the 3rd band D and I figured we were at mile 3.
Having not seen any mile markers we were very upset when we saw a marker for mile 2!
Small setback, carry on.
By mile 4.5 Coach J. urged D. to go on in order to make her goal of 3 hours and 10 minutes.
As my goal was 'only' 3 hours and 50 minutes I guess I was going strong!
Miles 4.5 through 7 I walked with M. my partner from earlier.

We encountered this lady at mile 5.5, she was quite the push to keep going.

At mile 7.5 M. had to jog to keep up with my walking so we parted ways. As it was I ran into D. at almost mile 8 and we walked for a mile until mile 9.



Mile 8 to 11 were freeway 163 (I think, I forgot)
I jogged at least a mile on the freeway and it was the downhill part. At some point I saw the hotel we stayed at last year when we were in San Diego and that totaly blew my mind as I recalled the amount of traffic we encountered on the way back to San Diego. And here I was WALKING this freeway!
D. and I were still together and we passed some of our faster team mates as well as 2 coaches.
Finaly I saw the exit for Friars Road, our destination and I stopped to take a picture.

Mile 10 loomed ahead and the sun was starting to come out, we exited the freeway onto Friars Road.
The last 3.1 miles are a blur. D. and I ran from 12 to 13 and walked the last little bit.
According to my Nano and Nike chip I finished in 3 hours and 22 minutes.

to be continued.....................