I came back from Nashville yesterday. I had a great time. I'll start with Friday...Here goes. I met the TNT at Lisa's house. She is a wonderful artist. I waited for Mike, who is a friend of their family, and was our driver. He has a really nice truck. I think it was a yukon or something like that. There was room enough for all of us. We watched movies and talked. This made the ride seem so short. We were at the Doubletree in no time. Once we got to the Hotel, we checked in (by the way Doubletree has great chocolate chip and walnut cookies...yummy), walked to the expo. Alexis, Dennise and I ate lunch in the hotel restaurant before the expo. At the expo, the runners pick up their bibs, shoe chips, t-shirts and race information packets. The expo had tons of vendors selling running related products. I didn't get too crazy. I just bought a cap, sunglasses and a magazine subscription.
After that, we went to our rooms to relax and wait for the Team In Training inspiration dinner. I went to my room hoping that Fred and Bug would make it in time to attend the dinner. I really wanted them to come and experience as much as they could with me. They made it just in time. The dinner started at 6:00pm. Fred and bug met me and the rest of the team at 5:30pm in the lobby. I was so excited to see the both of them. The dinner was amazing they served two types of pasta, rolls, salad. They had several speakers who were Leukemia and Lymphoma survivors. One of the survivors had run several marathons and has raised over 16,000 this season alone. One young lady wrote a song for her cousin who lost her battle with leukemia called 'dancing with Jesus'. IT was a beautiful song and she sung the song beautifully. All of us were in tears (even the men). After dinner, we met as a team to go over what we needed to know for the big day. The officials were preparing us for inclement weather because of all the tornado and thunderstorm warnings. That day was so beautiful, it was hard to imagine that such bad weather was expected for less than 24 hours later. We were instructed to be at the buses at 4:45 am. I actually slept well, but I couldn't shake the nausea that I had been feeling all week. The anxiety and excitement of reaching this goal that I had worked so hard for was getting to me physically.
So I got back to the room really late, Fred helped me get my clothes and other running gear prepared so that all I had to do was take a warm bath and head to the bus. The next morning, I woke up at about 3:30am. Fred was just as nervous as I was. He told me that he had a dream that I was late for the start. This dream caused him to wake up every hour and look at the clock. Isn't he so supportive. This ment just as much to him as it did to me. What a great man! Anyway, I got up ate my cliff bar, drank some gatorade and headed to the lobby to meet the team. We rode the bus and headed to the starting line.
There were so many people. There were at least 20,000 people standing in front of us and 15,000 more were behind us in different corrals. Our corral started at about 7:30 am. There were so many characters running the race: a woman with a chicken hat, Elvis, hoola hoopers, jugglers. The locals were serving food on their lawns to the runners. Some people had beer, coffee, oranges, bananas to serve the runners. BUT THE HILLS WERE TOUGH. The whole coarse was up and down hills. At mile 10, my right calf started to cramp up. George and I stopped to stretch out the calf. And we were back on track...off and running.
The sun was out, the wind was blowing and everything looked beautiful. I had a full marathon in me. I am going to finish this thing my way. I was feeling great. At mile 11, which was the full/half marathon split (this is the point where those who are running 26.2 miles separate from the ones running 13.1 miles.) The clouds were becoming dark, the wind was starting to blow a little harder. The police officers told all full marathon runners (they could tell by the color of our bibs) to take the half marathon coarse. So that means I could not try the full. I was disappointed, but I was also so proud of myself. So with that said, we only had to run 2 more miles. We ran to the end. The finish line was at LP stadium where the Titan play. All of the TNT coaches and mentors were there to cheer me across the finish. What a great feeling! We took time to be photographed. Some of the volunteers began to hand out medals, based on my bib color they handed me a full marathon medal. I asked politely if I could have a 1/2 marathon medal. They gave me one. I only want a full medal when I have actually completed a full. So that is the end of my journey to completing my first 1/2 marathon. There will be plenty more races. I can't wait for the next one. I finished before the other team members. They got caught in the rain. I was on the bus back to the hotel before the rain started. After the race as I was walking to the TNT bus, I still had the nausea that I had had all week. I thought that was nerves and anxiety. Maybe its something else....we will see :)
Awesome job! Congratulations!
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