iron katymoe

I made it.  I made it to the NIKE women’s marathon and I made it THROUGH the NIKE women’s marathon, well half-marathon.  This race is very near and dear to my heart because it was my first FULL MARATHON way back in 2005, wahoo!  I loved ALL of it,  I always wanted to come back to race it again!!! Many of my BIG dreams started there!  Maybe I COULD qualify for Boston? Maybe I COULD race and Ironman?!

This year’s race was supposed to be very exciting and fun.  I was planning to race at NWM (that’s what I’m calling it because I’m tired of writing it ok?)….back to the story….I was planning to race the full marathon this year.  I got really excited because…

1. I was going to get to race this race again, plain and simple.

2. This was going to be my first SOLO-marathon (marathon without an IM attached) since 2006!

3. Including my two IM races this would be a marathon distance run every year for the past 5 years!

Now, don’t those three things sounds exciting?!?!?!?  I was JAZZED! Then I found out I had a racing buddy doing it too.  Life couldn’t get better.  Well, a couple hundred-ish miles of running later, we all know the story of my stinkin’ plantar fascia and it’s plans to ruin my life.

After battling with The Fascia (I’m calling it that), I almost immediately wrote the full marathon off, but for a LONG time still planned to race the 1/2.  I mean, c’mon when “The Fascia” started acting up, I was already running 13 mile long-runs. Piece of cake right?  Well…Lefty over there (I’m talking about my left foot) didn’t agree.  Race day was fast approaching and I wasn’t running AT ALL.  Like ZERO miles for the past month and a half. gasp!  I was, however, water running, elipticaling, and cycling up a storm (more stories on those things to come), oh and not P90Xing (more on that too….I know I know…where are the HOT-Katy pictures? I don’t want to talk about it).

Suddenly it was race week, and I started panicking.  I REALLY wanted my TIFFANY’s necklace….and they always have great race shirts….but could I trust myself to NOT RUN…to save my foot?  Could  I walk a half-marathon…..how long does that take anyways?  It sounded REALLY boring. Almost torturous….to go to a RUNNING race and WALK and watch everyone else LOVING being able to RUN. UGH!   What had I done to deserve this!?

I went over every possible plan with Brett, about how I would/could walk this race.  Really, I didn’t think I’d be able to run the whole thing AND I thought it would be better for my foot to walk it.   So I talked about alternating running and walking  a mile at a time, then running three, walking one, etc, etc.   Literally, I think my wonderful Brett sat through me saying each and every possible scenario of how to run walk 13 miles (thank you!).

Race morning, my plan was to run three miles then see how I felt and then jog/walk the rest of the way.  Well,  I LOVE RUNNING!!!!!  So…when I got to mile three, I kinda decided that I should probably run to mile 6 since that was where the hills were.  Then at mile six, I decided to just run THAT hill….then the next one was so small that…..then I before I knew it I was at mile TEN….so I just kinda finished the race without walking.  I did stop and take LOTs o’ Pictures.  My foot feels the same (if not better) which is weird, but I’m totally ok with it.

My pictures from the weekend don’t really “go with” the actual blog so I’m just posting them here at the bottom.

Just Us Girls La Femme Sportive

Sporting our new gear!

Beautiful views looking back at the Embarcadero from the top of mile 6ish.

These signs were so fun to read on the hills!

Looking down on the finish line from mile 9.

Celebrating with Kristen and Cheree

Kristen ran the full marathon and Cheree ran the 1/2

(but only because she ran a full last weekend!)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 10:46 pm and is filed under NIKE women's marathon, brett, race stories, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.