Wow!

Yikes!!! You guys are THE BEST!! I asked for cheers of support as I headed off to the marathon and little did I know how you guys would respond! Before our plane left Friday afternoon (late, no less) I had nearly 30 well wishes and when I checked Saturday morning from the hotel it was just under 40! From our airport locale we relocated to the Radisson Downtown to be near the start/finish area. Personally, I greatly prefer staying in moderate priced hotels to the massive downtown hotels. The moderate guys give you a free breakfast and they all seem to have FREE wireless internet access. At the downtown highrises NOTHING is free or easy. But I'll go into all of that when I do the full race recap..... All that rambling to say internet was $13 a day at the Radisson so no internet wishes going into Sunday am's marathon, which totally sucked.

Today we relocated to a true, artsy South Beach hotel over on Ocean Drive. Way cheaper than downtown, free internet, we're across the street from the ocean and the staff is incredibly nice. Yeah!! It might have been worth it to stay over here all along and just drive to the start. We checked in, hooked up the laptop and it told us we had 65 new messages!! WTH!!! You guys are awesome! About 5 spam and 60 congrat emails make for two very happy RBF-ers, one of whom is now part of the marathon club! It was great, it helped me relive the excitement of yesterday all over again. Love it!!!!!!!!



I'll do a full, blow by blow, blister by blister recap of the marathon once we get home. The plane leaves tomorrow (BOO!). I'd love to stay and lounge on the beach for a few more days.......The marathon was......awesome!! So totally different than what I expected but I didn't have a clue what to expect to begin with! For me, the toughest miles were miles 1-3. My stomach was gurgling a little and I had a ton of doubt bouncing around in my head. Then the sun started coming up on the beautiful hotels in South Beach and I told myself to suck it up, I had trained for this forever (it seemed like) and I was too damn lucky to have the ability to do this thing and too lucky to afford a great trip like this to blow it in my head. And then I started having fun, and the fun never ended until I crossed that finish line. Maybe it still hasn't sunk in. No, it totally hasn't sunk in. But I'm ready to do it again, but not this weekend!! I'm more than a bit wobbly going down stairs right now and there's one blister that needs to be taken care of once we get home. Our plan tomorrow morning is to get up and do a one mile run on the beach. It would be a shame NOT to have a run on the beach while we're here, and I think I can manage a mile.

Anyway, more when we got home, but for now here's the executive summary: It was fun!!!! My official time is 4:28.05. I never hit the "wall" or if I did I'm too dumb to know it. When I saw the 20 mile marker I was too excited that I was only 6 miles out to slow down, and I got more and more excited at each subsequent mile marker. (Which was likely VERY apparent to the onlooker at mile 24 who had a Boston Terrier. I'll never forget the frightened look he gave me when I SCREAMED out "I HAVE A DOG JUST LIKE THAT AT HOME". I guess he thought the runners should run and the crowd should handle the screaming!! He will probably always think marathoners lose mental functuality and manners by the 24th mile.) I got to meet two cool RBF-ers (David and Naomi) and I'm convinced I have the best, most supportive husband in the world!! Even though it was very, very warm (it was 70 by 7 am) Miami is a GREAT course with virtually no elevation to speak of, so if you're on the Boston borderline I would highly recommend it. ING definitely knows how to put on a marathon.









Enjoy these pics until we're home to post more! Enjoy!!!! Now I'll pass the marathon/ultramarathon torch off to Angie who has her first 50K this weekend!! (Technically my Garmin says I went 26.4 miles, does that make me a ultramarathoner?????)