The Montreal Oasis Marathon

I have been probably driving my friends and family nuts with all my DailyMile posts on my training for the marathon this summer, and you can all relax now - it's officially over and done.  On January 1st, I made a commitment to myself to run a marathon this year, then I went and told everyone so I had to go through with it since I am way too proud for my own good.  

Picture taken before leaving for the Marathon.

Running a marathon is hard. It is probably the hardest thing I have ever done, and I gave birth naturally twice. Sure having a baby is hard, but you have no choice once labour starts you can't walk away, and the reward is so much better when you have a baby that it outweighs all the pain and effort. But I digress....  back to the marathon, it's very hard. 42.2 kilometers hard.  Hard because you have to train for it for months ahead of time, and by the time you are in it, you start realising that you didn't train enough!  Hard because you can walk away at anytime from the training or during the marathon itself, and no one will try to convince you to stick it out. (about 150 runners did that today). Hard because you can't really keep up with all those twenty and thirty something kids on the run with you - especially the tall one with legs up to there.  Hard because after 30 kilometer, you start to really hurt. Your feet hurt (new blister) your muscles hurt (big leg cramps kept me from running for a couple kilometers - I could barely walk!), your clothes hurt - because they are soaking wet, they rub on your skin and chafe you, and that's despite all the balm you applied before the race (thanks to Eric for the Butt Butter), so you hobble on your sore feet and tell yourself that you will NOT walk off the course since you have done 3 quarters of it. But it is hard.  I learned a lot today. I learned that I don't know enough about the science of diet for this type of competition - I could have probably avoided those cramps with more potassium in my diet (and I hate bananas - so those bananas they were handing out to runners, I totally ignored) I learned that you can never overtrain for this kind of commpetition - and most of all, I learned that I can really push myself to the limit.  I don't ever want to stop running, but now, those 5-8 kilometer runs will feel fun - maybe I can work on my speed!   Will I do it again? Not sure - I've got to heal my bobos first.  One thing for sure... I am not running tomorrow!