My family (my aunt Kathleen, Ivy, Grandma and Grandpa) met Marc and I at the expo on Saturday afternoon. Where Marc and I picked up our numbers and Champagne splits (yummy) and then we had time to kill, so after we made reservations at the world famous Sorge's in downtown Corning, we made our way to the Corning Museum of Glass, which is always pretty interesting, and then off to eat a whole bunch of yummy food and a couple of beers at Sorge's restaurant! We spent the night in Bath at the Super 8, and then it was up early to head down to the Philips Light Company for the start of the race! The temperature was a very chilly 37', but I had brought some light mittens and a hat and some arm covers to keep me warm, things that I didn't mind if I had to lose, but it turns out that it never really warmed up, and I was comfortable in those things for the entire day! Everyone seemed pretty excited to see how the day would unfold!
This is me and Grandpa at the start of the race! His Christmas gift- that he had to wait 10 months for!
As far as the race itself - It went off pretty well, especially for my first marathon (i say that like i'm going to do it again - that can't be a bad sign) Marc and I ran together for a little while, he wanted to run it just to see if he would feel any better from the rochester marathon, and ended up pulling out because he hasn't healed from Rochester, but he found a penny from heaven probably about 6 miles in and gave it to me! Which was excellent, I put it in my pocket and thought about it often! (for those of you who don't know about my pennies from heaven - everytime you find a penny on the ground it was put there from a loved one in heaven who is wishing that they could be there with you) and I got a huge lift from my family waiting at around mile 9, I had to reach out and give them all high fives!
Everyone always says that a marathon can be divided into two equal parts, the first 20, and the last 6.2. I can attest to that. At around 21 miles(granted I just bent over to pick up another penny from heaven which was probably a bad idea, i hadn't stopped running at all until that point, and then putting my head down below my heart was probably a bad idea) but the last 5 miels or so were very challenging, but I kept my head up, and managed to get to Corning!
My sister agreed to run the last quarter of a mile with me! So that was something that I looked forward to for the last 5 miles, just waiting to see my sister - and boy was that a treat! I'm SO glad that she decided to gut it out and run a bit with me! We crossed the finish line together, and she talked me through it - saying - come on Holly, you're almost there, we can see the finish line - etc - what a great little coach she turned out to be!After the race, I had to show my family the pennies from heaven that I had found, I gave one to Ivy :)
I thought it would be nice to sit down with my sister for awhile, waiting for the awards...but then I couldn't get back up.
My overall stats:I finished in 3 hours 26 minutes and 12 seconds
I was 100th overall finisher
9th overall woman
and 3rd in my age group
I also qualified for Boston, which I plan to run in the year 2010.
All in all, I loved running the marathon, and I definitely am going to run more of them. i took yesterday off of work, but today I rode my bike in, and I don't feel too bad, I have a little hitch in my giddy up, but nothing to write home about. I definitely will be running the Wineglass next year!
