Wow! It's been awhile since I have posted anything about races. So it's time to go back a few months to where I did grandma's marathon back in June. To start though I decided to take a year off from doing Ironmans and to focus spending more time with my husband =) With that being said I still am doing races and learning how to enjoy life outside of Ironman training. First thing I have realized is how much down time I have now. With that being said I did decide to sign up for Grandma's Marathon to get another state out of the way. This marathon would make state number 11!
Grandma's marathon is a point to point run along a lake and it was also a straight shot with really no turns. So 26.2 along one road made for a long run haha. The morning was cold somewhere in the 50's and extremely foggy. I have never ran in fog like that before and it was actually pretty neat. You could only see about a half mile in front of you. With the little training I did for this race those because I was dealing with an injury, I was really hoping to just finish. The race started out good I told myself I was going to run/walk the race like I did an Ironman Florida. I ran 4 mins. and walked 1 min and it was working out great. Right away though in the race my foot was hurting a lot, but it didn't stop me. I tried to focus on 4 mins at a time. Around mile 6 a guy noticed I was doing a run/walk and asked me about it. After talking to him for a while he decided to join me in the run/walk. At this point even though it was early on in the race still it was nice to have someone to talk to to help take my mind off the pain. He really helped me get through every mile with the pain I was in.
I believe it was around mile 20 I heard someone yell "Tracey" I looked over and there was Jordan (he was running it to) hunched over. I ran over to him and asked what was wrong. To keep things simple his calf's cramped up on him and he could barely walk. I was about about him finishing so I put all my focus on him and walked the rest of the race with him. We even at times had to stop. With it been so cold out and every now and then it started to drizzle I found something to wrap myself in to stay warm and continued to walk with Jordan. That was the longest 6 miles of my life =) We both made it to the finish line and Jordan's drive to still finish was amazing since he was barely able to walk. Most of all I am proud of him with never letting himself quit as we past every drop out zone they had. With that being said neither of us had our best race but we finished and have another state under our belt!
