Dallas White Rock Marathon

I can't believe it has been over a month since I have made a blog post - yikes! This has been an extremely busy couple of months for everyone with the holidays and all but I am back on it!

So, I finished my first marathon since both boys have been born - YAY ME! The last one was the NYC Marathon in 2005! Of course it was not without a good story to go along with it.

My training was going great and about a month before the marathon I started to come down with a cough. My cough turned into hacking and that turned into constant coughing attacks all day, everyday for about 2 weeks. I went to the doc, was put on medicine for bronchitis but it never got better; however, I kept on training no matter how I felt or what the temperatures were outside.

The couple of days before the race I was feeling awful and the night before wasn't any better; however, I decided that I had trained too hard to give up now so the race must go on! I woke up the morning of the race feeling OK but still coughing quite a bit. I just told people it was allergies knowing good and well it was a pretty bad case of bronchitis. My running gal pal, Julie, picked me up at 6AM and we were off to Downtown Dallas for our first White Rock Marathon.

It was craziness until the race started - lots of people, VERY humid although great temperatures in the low 30's, the usual chaos before a marathon. I wasn't feel myself at all and was nervous that I was not going to make it through but once the gun went off I settled down. We started with a pace group so we just followed our pace leader through the large crowds. The humidity really got to me early in the race as did the constant coughing. We lost our pace group somewhere early on b/c the crowds were just too much but we caught up to them around mile 10 or 12. By mile 15 my body started to break down little by little and I though for sure I would have to pull out. Once again we lost our group. I was feeling pain that I had never felt during training or any other race. My hip flexors were tight, my quads and shins were cramping and I heard a POP in my left hamstring that had me stop to take a breather and to stretch. Once I got to feeling better, we took off and once again caught up with our group around mile 17 or 18 but I was really in pain and had to stop again due to another pop in the same hamstring.

We met up with Julie's family around mile 21 which was a nice break and then a coworker of hers also met us with a funny sign, "Make Forest Proud - Run Julie, Rachel & Wolfgang!" It is always good to see familiar faces, especially at that point in the race.



Julie's husband found us at mile 22 or 23 and rode his bike with us until mile 26. THANK GOD for my awesome running partner for sticking with me and her wonderful husband, Jeremy for riding next to me and talking me through my pain! It really helped me get through those last miles. And best of all, Alex and my little angel Brooks met me at mile 26 to run a little ways and then the rest of my family was at mile 26 as well! Seeing them made my pains go away and gave me that last burst of energy I needed to cross the finish line.



We crossed with a chip time of 4:20:44, my second best time so far. I must say, I was very proud of my time considering I had two quick potty breaks, quite a few stops to stretch and say hello to family and because I was so sick. It was a very rough day for me but I made it through and am very proud of my accomplishment.



After the race, I had lunch with my family and went straight to the ER. The outcome was that on top of severe bronchitis, they saw the end stages of pneumonia and a fractured rib. I am just glad I survived! Next stop, Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon on April 25th!