Loosing My First Marathon

I’m one week away for my second official marathon and I’m feeling anxious and a little excited.  I did two warm up marathons before this.  One 10 weeks after I started training and the second as the North Shore Marathon 16 weeks after I started training.  It’s this marathon that I came last in.  I’m straining to think of what helped me run 42 kilometres last time before I go into full-on panic mode.

1.  Encouragement

The other runners were SO encouraging.  Running is kind-of an individual sport.  I fit in running around my girls and my hubby, which often means early morning or evenings.  What I didn’t anticipate was the other runners being SO nice!  There was a point in the race where I had 2-3 kilometres of other runners saying “Doing good Sarah” or “Keep it up Sarah” or “Good form Sarah” – and that was after I ran into a bush!  It was good to share a laugh on the way.  I actually ran my fastest kilometre the second half of the race, after this encouragement.  The power of encouraging someone is physically evident.

2. Choose Yourself

When I was running the last 5+ kilometres the staff  were moving from their posts, and the truck was picking up the cones on the road.  Not only did it make me feel not good enough, I also felt really anxious as I didn’t know the way to go very well.  I had to fight the tears and simply choose myself.  These people “didn’t believe in me” (in reality they were doing their job) but I had to.  I had to choose to finish, even if my time didn’t count.  I had to tell my legs that were in pain and not wanting to move to “Lift, Lift, Lift.”  That day I realised I can do anything I set my mind to do.

3.  127 out of 127

I came 127 out of 127 competitors and 33 out of 33 women at a time of 6 hours 15 minutes.  My cousin pointed out to me that only 127 people competed in the North Shore Marathon out of 1.42 million people in Auckland.  So according to those statistics.  127/14200000  I’m actually pretty awesome!  Yes I just said it.  I’m awesome.  I could run 42 kilometres in 6 hours 15 minutes.

This time around I’m hoping to run quicker than that.  I would love to make 5 hours 30mins, but anything below 6 hours will be good.  Okay lets be honest, so long as I finish I’ll be happy.  Because then, I would have run 2 official marathons in 5 months of training.  Pretty happy with that!