Marathon Part 3: The Slightly Shorter Ride Home

So after crossing the uneventful finish line, grabbing some juice and goodies and chatting for a minute we headed back to the motel. When we had checked in on Friday the innkeeper had told us there was no checkout time! He said to enjoy the race, come back and have a shower or enjoy the hot tub, and leave when we were ready. How cool is that?? Their motel was sold out for marathon weekend so you know they have to love it!

As we pulled into the motel a guy named Jim who had worn a Knoxville Track Club singlet was leaving. We'd traded back and forth with him for about the first 17 miles of the race. We'd shared encouragement on the hills and he'd amused us as he danced (literally) through water stops. He yelled out to us: "Did you have fun?" We yelled back "Yes!! Did you?" His answer: "If it ain't fun I don't run!"

We made our post race "chip" update call to Mouse and told her Brent was a marathoner! She was as excited as I was, and Brent started to get a **little** more excited about his new status. (On a side note, he is now very happy to be part of the Marathon club.) We had tried to send blog updates/texts during the race but the reception out there just wasn't strong enough. We took showers, checked out and headed to the Mexican restaurant next door. There is something about pizza and also Mexican that is THE perfect post endurance race food to me. We hobbled in, had some chips and cheese dip (I LOVE CHEESE DIP) and some enchiladas. We saw a couple of the race volunteers come in while we were eating, and as we left (hobbling) Brent said he saw them chuckle a bit. Who cares??? We just ran TWENTY SIX.TWO MILES! Chuckle away and pass me the cheese dip! I earned it!

While we ran with the 50 states couple they gave me some alternate directions for heading back to Nashville. That was extremely nice of them and all, but when I'm running I have no sense of math or deep levels of detail. I sort of become the average American who isn't even sure who their state's governor is. I nodded the whole time she was throwing out landmarks and thought "we'll just ask for directions on the way home." Brent thought he knew how to get back, and for the most part he was right. It had turned out to be a beautiful day - the sun was out now and the changing leaves were gorgeous. We even saw an Amish horse and buggy on the way back! And now we could enjoy all the scenic rolling hills knowing our run was over. There was one highway intersection where we weren't quite sure - and of course we went the wrong way. TN highway markings SUCK! There's no arrows telling you what town you might end up at if you go that way. We stopped at some diner and found out we had gone the wrong way. Oh well. We headed back the RIGHT way and that was the only time we got lost. It took us right at 2 hours to get home, not bad at all considering it took us FOUR hours to get there the day before.

We got home, took a 30 minute power nap, baked some brownies and headed over to J's party. We were SO zonked but it was a great party. We got to meet quite a few of the local bloggers, and it was really nice to put faces with blogs. Although - since everyone was in costume I doubt I would recognize anyone in their normal clothes! It's so weird to meet people who know who you are (or who your dog is!!) before you've even introduced yourself. You really get to skip all the "I like to run" diatribe when someone says "Oh yeah - you ran a really long race in Miami earlier this year". Ha! We stayed for a couple of hours and then headed home to CRASH (and take a pic of my swollen feet). I slept like a baby and woke up the following morning like a pirate with two wooden legs. For some reason Brent wasn't all that sore, which he repeatedly demonstrated by LITERALLY dancing around the house.

Monday I was just barely sore and decided to run 2 recovery miles on the treadmill. Everything felt good, except for my extremely sore throat. Tuesday (Halloween) I sneezed ALL DAY long. By 9 am a coworker told me "Bless you, and bless you for the rest of the day." We raced home from work and got dressed up for the trick-r-treaters. 251 rascals later and I was ready to climb in bed. The turnout was unreal. We had tons of Supermen, princesses, and pirates. HUGE groups of kids would pass down the street like one of the Biblical plagues. Brent wore my witch outfit with a scary skeleton mask. Lots of kids got scared when they saw him, but in my friendly Darth Vader costume holding Pippin dressed as Spiderman I was able to convince them to come on up. One scared kid gave Brent a hug before he left. Another little one cried when they saw him!! Tons of kids wanted to pet Pippin, and so tons of kids were licked by Pippin. One kid asked me if Pippin was pregnant. Obviously I need to walk him more! We had several parents take our pictures with their kid and were even videoed a few times. With just 15 pieces of candy left we switched off the lights and took cover. I was asleep and dead to the world by 9:15. On Wednesday I had a full blown sinus infection. On Thursday I was coughing and coughing and coughing. On Friday - still coughing. Today - still coughing, but not as bad. I've GOT to get rid of this sinus infection in less than 2 weeks and be rested for the Monkey! We had planned to run 11-12 yesterday, but ended up doing 5.2. All the crap I've been coughing up just wasn't working with running yesterday, and getting my rest is more important than logging a few miles.

Well, I need to upload the pics for this post and then have some dinner! More about this weekend later! I've got Halloween pics of us and the house but I need to download them to the computer so that will just have to wait.

MAJOR congrats to all the new and repeat Ironmen from IMFL yesterday and all the new and repeat marathoners from NYC today!! WAY TO GO!

Rachel