Marathon! and family visit too :)

2 weeks ago, I ran my 5th full marathon. Mom and Matthew made the trip out for the weekend to enjoy the beautiful AZ weather and see me run. They flew on Thursday night and on Friday, Matthew came to school with me to do a presentation on food chemistry to our honors chemistry classes at North Canyon. He did great and the kids loved him! We went out to lunch at America's Taco Shop, then headed to the race expo to pick up my goodie bags and race number. Friday night was the American Cancer Society team dinner in Tempe which was great. It really put into perspective why I ran the race and how many people will benefit from the money Team DetermiNation raised. Saturday, we drove out to Apache Junction and did some light hiking/sightseeing in Lost Dutchman State Park. We got some lunch at Dilly Deli and then came home to watch football. Keeper made me an awesome pasta dinner on Saturday night :)

The race went well overall. I raised $1,725.00 for the American Cancer Society as part of Team DetermiNation and I had a huge marathon PR of about 32 minutes. The last marathon I had run was in 2008 in San Diego, before I started coaching and running with high school kids...needless to say I guess all the training paid off. It was pretty to cool to be running my 5th marathon on the 5th anniversary of the first one I ran...and it was the same race! It feels like forever when I flew out here (in 2006) with Jen & Andrew and we stayed with the Bronders in Tempe for race weekend. The course was pretty much the same and it was neat to know exactly where I was at all times. Keeper got up early with me on race morning so we could head downtown for my charity team's pre-race "warm zone". A local Mexican restaurant had donated their "space" to us on race morning. It was awesome to have a meeting place, breakfast (NOT Mexican food, normal running food), and most importantly, CLEAN, FLUSHABLE TOILETS to use pre-race. No lines for port-a-potties that had run of toilet paper (and smelled)!!! At 7am, the marathon runners marched down to the start as a big group and I jumped in my corral. The first 6 miles were nice, I was just getting into the groove...I saw some coaches from my group a little after mile 5, and then I saw Mom, Matthew, and Keeper right around the 10k mark of the course. The race ran literally a half a block from our condo. The next few miles were nice as I ran through my "hood" and down through the Biltmore area and across Camelback Rd to Scottsdale. I saw another ACS coach around mile 14 and I was feeling great. I was doing pretty well until mile 20 ish. I saw my coach at mile 20.5 and I thought I could hang on to my pace for the rest of the race....but marathons are not exactly like that. After awhile, EVERYTHING starts to hurt and you just resort to putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to cramp up. You dump packets of salt on your tongue because you feel your calf muscles spasm-ing. You feet hurt and you feel a blister squish and pop around mile 23 (gross!). I did have to slow down the last 5 miles but nothing cramped up completely and I still finished at a decent time. I was SO GLAD to be done. After a painful walk back to the car and a shower at home, I happily consumed my favorite post-marathon meal: a giant burger, fries, and a beer. Mission accomplished.