Ogden Marathon

I love the process of running a marathon.  From the beginning of training when it's as much training your mind as it is putting in the miles, throughout the middle when it's just an effort of time getting all the long runs in, all the way to the end when race day arrives and your stomach is full of butterflies in anticipation.  It's a 6 month journey that I love taking part in every once in a while.  This year race day fell on my birthday(!) which just made it cool anyway and I felt like maybe I had a little luck on my side because of that.  Turns out it was a combination of things that made it the perfect day to run a marathon! 

Friday afternoon I rode the train up to Ogden and Josh's mom kindly put me up in her spare bedroom for the night. I borrowed their car for a few hours and headed to the expo where I got my bib, my bag of goodies and shopped around looking at all the booths.  I had an early dinner of pasta and breadsticks from Olive Garden which has become my tradition before race day.  And then I headed back to the house to get ready for the morning and get to bed early.  Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping because I'm anticipating and early rise, but this night I had no trouble and slept all the way until my alarm went of at 4:00 am.  I felt rested, ready and excited.  The bus ride to the starting line is fun because there's a great energy in the crowd of people all going and doing the same hard thing that I'm about to do!  It's so great to be a part of! I had about an hour at the starting line before the race and it was just the right amount of time to get in a good stretch, use the bathroom and find my sis-in-law Steph just as the race was about to start.  She was with a group of friends, so we said hello and goodbye and split up as the horn to start the race went off.  And just like that, all the work we'd all put in those long months was about to be tested.  

I went with a different approach this year as I was feeling a little less confident about my running time and how I was going to do.  I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself that I need to/want to qualify for Boston because the last marathon I ran I also qualified.  I think I feel like I should always be able to since I did it once.  It's weird and crazy and I always tell myself I should just be happy to finish, but there's a big part of me that just wants to qualify and that tends to put me under a lot of self-induced pressure.  Anyway, I was feeling very un-confident about my chances of qualifying this year due to a small injury I've had, my age (41!) and the fact that it's been 3 years since I've run a full marathon because of covid cancelling all sorts of races the past few years.  Due to that, I wasn't really trusting myself that I would be able to run a fast enough pace to make it.  So...I decided to run without my watch giving me mile marker updates with time and splits.  I ALWAYS run with my watch on and usually love to hear how I'm doing and where I'm at, but today I wasn't feeling it.  I wanted to just run and do it my pace without any extra pressure on myself.  So that's what I did.  I had my music on loud, I enjoyed the absolutely gorgeous scenery around me and basked in the warm sun that was shining down on all of us runners.  It was literally THE PERFECT day to run.  I kept a good pace, ran without getting into my own head, had one bathroom break at mile 11 and didn't check my watch or the time until I crossed the halfway mark and saw that the official time was 1:41:00.  I did some quick math in my head and felt good about the pace I was running and did my best to just keep it up.  Around mile 21 as I was coming down out of the canyon I stopped for just 15 seconds or so to stretch my right knee that was feeling sore, but other than that small minute I had really no other problems through the whole race.  It was finally at mile 23 when I saw another official clock that said 3:04:00 that I realized with just 3 miles left to go I was actually on pace to not just qualify for Boston, but also run my own PR.  And then when my playlist that was only 3:15 long ended not too long after that, I knew that I could do it.  I really was on pace to make it!  I pushed hard to the end and crossed the finish line as it read 3:32:01 and felt like I had conquered the world!  I did it!  I felt so amazing at what I just accomplished but also just LOVED seeing everyone right at the finish line cheering and waving and yelling for me and all the runners.  What a great day it was!  I know that a marathon is so mental and I was just so happy to have been able to talk my way through that whole race and actually do it.  My official time came in at 3:31:49 - 3 minutes faster than my fastest time before.  I'm headed to BOSTON!