Thanks to all of you who helped me raise money for St Jude's, it was an amazing experience and I'm ready to sign up for my next one, it's pretty addictive for those of you who are not runners. At least it is for my personality type, you just want to do better the next time, always work towards being better until it's easy and then you move on to the next challenge.
Mallory spent Friday night with Mom and Dad and Kristy and I headed out around 8:30 on Friday morning and headed to Memphis. Ben and her fiance Kyle (who Ben knows because he's a Service Manager for one of his dealerships he calls on) were going to head out when Kyle got off work.
We got to Memphis after lunch, got checked into our hotel and then headed downtown to the Cook Expo center to pick up our race bibs, shirts and check out the expo goodies!
I was bib number #13175, they did them based on last name as opposed to when you registered, not that it mattered but between the 5K, the half and the full marathon, there were 18,000 runners there on Saturday!!
We got checked in, got our long sleeve technical race shirts and then browsed around the expo, lots and lots of race/running goodies!
Thankfully I was able to exchange my Hero's singlet, they gave everyone who raised money a special singlet to wear that showed you were at "St Jude's Hero" as they call you. I had plugged in M for shirt because that's what i want in a man's but women's technical shirts like that run small, so I was able to exchange it for a large so it wasn't so tight!
We then had a few hours to kill before the Hero's Pasta Dinner so we hopped on the trolley and took the loop around downtown Memphis. We got off at Beal Street and walked around and then had to have some BBQ Nacho's at BB Kings.
We then headed back to the Expo and grabbed some pasta and then headed back to the hotel. We then worked on getting all our gear together and all laid out so we would be good to go early in the morning!
Ben and Kyle finally got there around 10 pm and then decided to grab beer and talk down by the pool until like 1 am. Which considering we needed to be up by 5:45 wasn't really the best idea for them, but I got my sleep!
Kristy and I got up and going early, headed down for some breakfast with plans on leaving the hotel by 6:30 to allow for plenty of time to get downtown and find our places, etc. Well Ben wasn't moving too swift, or at all really, so we didn't leave until almost 7 am and the race starts at 8!
But, we did get there fine, they dropped us off, we found the porta potties and our "corral" as they call them. That's where you start with people who run at roughly the same pace as you so faster people aren't having to pass slower people. We were in corral 12 so we didn't cross the start line until around 8:22 but the first group did start while we were still in line for the porta potties.
I was all nerves for some reason, I think because I knew I trained better and really wanted to try to come in a 2 hours 40 minutes or below and I knew if all went well I could. But, once I got running I was fine, the nerves subsided thankfully!
The first part of the race was great, we ran down by the river, past the pyramid, through Beale Street and then at mile 5 we went through St Jude's campus. Everyone warned me that was going to be really emotional and I figured I'd cry. The families were out there really cheering you on, especially those who had on their singlets, they knew those were the one's raising money. My eyes welled up but I didn't cry, so we plugged on.
Right after that though my hip started hurting. I wasn't expecting hip pain, I'd had no hip issues through any of my training. My groin muscle had been giving me problems and I figured it would start bugging me around mile 8 but my hip never crossed my mind. I was like great, 8 more miles while my hip is killing me.
I couldn't figure out why my hip was hurting and then it finally occured to me, the roads there in Memphis are really graded at a pretty good slope so unless you are running on the center line, you are running on an uneven surface and ever since I broke my tailbone in college running or walking on an uneven surface really bugs my hip, hence it was now really hurting.
But you plug on. I knew it was going to slow me down and that pissed me off, but what do you do? I kept with my run/walk plan as much as I could. (we ran 5K straight then walked 2 minutes, ran 1 K, walked 1 min, ran 1 K, walked 2 min, ran 1k, walked 1min, etc the rest of the way) so by about mile 9 or 10 I was having to walk a bit longer and take a walk break during my run part sometimes just because it hurt. So I didn't think I'd be able to make my 2:40:00 goal but I knew I'd still be much better than my first.
Right at mile 13 before we entered the baseball stadium where the finish line was, Ben and Kyle had found them a spot and were holding up the signs we made for them at the Expo, so that was fun to see and Ben got a picture!
I crossed the finish line right at 2:45:00, so 5 minutes slower than I had hoped, but I was still happy! with all that pain and walking I was only 5 minutes over my goal so I know I can be closer to 2:30:00 so now I've got to do another one, lol.
Here we are after the race with our medals! Kristy finished about 2:32, she did awesome too!!
I chugged water, put on my compression socks and grabbed some chocolate milk (my typical long run drink of choice afterwards) and recovered the best we could. I was tired but not hungry yet and I was somewhat limping because of my stupid hip but I knew once I got back to even surfaces it would be fine again.
We walked over to Rendevous and I watched the others eat, I just couldn't eat yet! I had a roll, I don't like ribs anyway. I changed clothes and then we headed out.
My quads and hamstrings were tight but that was pretty much my only issue, other than the hip that would also work itself out.
We got back to Elkton at about 7:30 Saturday night and I was ready to get Bean and crash!
By Monday or Tuesday I was feeling back to 100%, all soreness/tightness was gone and my hip was fine, which was good because I had to go to a Certified Crop Advisor's Board of Director's Meeting!
Lola ended up being sick so my initial plans would not work, so I ended up taking M with me and then Ben meeting us there at French Lick, IN after being at his dealer in IN on Monday. So Ben and Bean got to go swimming while I was in my board of director's meeting.
Then we walked around the hotel, which was decorated for Christmas, hit up the pizza parlor down by the arcades and then played some games with Bean. She had a ball!
Then we went up to the room and Ben hit up the Casino for an hour or so, he even had a little luck.
Tuesday I went to my meeting and got some credits while Ben and Bean bummed around, so we all had a good time!!
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