Before my Race

Where do I start?  Now that it’s over, I’ll tell you everything that went wrong before my Marathon.  First I got sick.  Not just a little sick, the sickest I’ve been in quite some time.  My nose would not stop running, my eyes would not stop watering, I had a sore throat...  I was miserable.  Monday October 4th I went in to the Doctor.  I knew that I needed to act fast if I wanted to be well in time for my race.  She gave me Claritin and nasal spray.  If anything I just got worse after that.  Come Thursday morning, I wanted to cry because I felt awful and was showing no signs of improvement so I called my Doctor back and asked what I could do.  She suggested that I add Zyrtec at night but that wasn’t flying with me.  I needed something good and fast because I was leaving the next day for Portland.  I had to ask if she would give me a shot and thank God she said okay.  I’ve never  been so excited for a shot in my life!  Being sick and not able to run would have killed me after all this training.  Thank goodness I finally started to feel some relief Saturday afternoon.  The shot took 24-48 hours to start working.  My flights were easy.  Being in Portland was fantastic!  The weather was great.  I got to meet my niece Evelyn for the first time which is beyond words wonderful.  All babies are cute but she is CUTE!  And I got to see the rest of the DeMoss family; Amanda, Jimmy and Jon.  It was so neat when my brother and I went to pick up my nephew from school that Friday he was so proud to tell everyone this is my Aunt Amanda.  Made my heart melt.  I love that little boy so much.  I also got to see my brother’s new house which was great!  I love that they are right there in the heart of the city.  I can tell how happy they are there and that makes me so happy for them.  Friday night we took it easy.  My brother rented us a movie Run Fat Boy Run.  I was so excited to watch it but I was so exhausted and could not keep my eyes open so we watched half that night and half the next.  I think the toll of the flight, being sick, and running around Portland all day had caught up with me.  The next day, Saturday, the day before the run we woke up and went to breakfast at Besaws.  One of the many perks of living where they do is you can walk to cute, quaint little breakfast spots like Besaws.  It had already begun raining and I must admit I was starting to get a little scared.  I knew the chances for rain on Saturday and Sunday were high but there was something about actually seeing it rain that made it become more real.  Breakfast was great!  I had pancakes with berries and whipped cream on top.  Yum!  The carb loading had begun.  That afternoon my brother and I went to the NIKE store and I bought a rain jacket.  I finally realized that I couldn’t wear my gear as planned.  It was going to rain, really rain so I needed to be prepared.  After buying my jacket, we saw that Jeff Galloway was speaking at the Hilton so as reluctant as I know my brother was, we went.  I convinced him that Jeff Galloway was an amazing runner, author and speaker that we must see.  It was neat to see someone I’ve read lots of running advice from.  I don’t follow his “methods” but I still think he’s very wise and has a lot of great advice to offer.  After that we got some pumpkin yogurt and headed back home.  Props to my brother for being such a stand up guy and putting up with me.  That evening we went to a cute little pasta place called Il Piatto.  My brother made reservations and we went just us 2.  My brother loves trying new places around Portland and this one was new to us both and quite fantastic!  Isn’t it great when you find somewhere new that you like?  You get to think yes I was a success.  Or in this case, my brother got to take all the credit.  I had the Funghi e Formaggia di Capra.  I know, heck if I know but it was delicious!  My brother and I talked about how it would be the perfect place to drink wine and just relax and have dinner.  Instead I was chugging water like it was going out of style!  But it was perfect, truly perfect.  Afterwards we went home and played with the kiddos and finished the rest of our movie.  (Very cute by the way)  I was trying to keep my nerves at bay but I was really nervous and ready to have my run over with.  I've really tried to enjoy every moment of this experience but come on, it’s so much easier to say I’ve done this rather than I’m going to do this.  This is one of the hardest parts for me. The anticipation... Almost here. Almost over. I will feel fear and excitement when my alarm goes off I thought.  I got into bed, cleared my mind and actually slept pretty decent.  I mean I woke up a couple of times with anticipation but overall it was a good night’s sleep.  When my alarm went off I hopped out of bed and ate my Clif bar, checked the weather (yep still raining) and prepared for my race.  Since it was raining pretty hard, I loaded my feet up with chafing cream.  The last thing I needed was blisters on my feet as I was trying to run.  I was ready.  This was the moment I had worked the past 10 months for and I wasn’t going to let rain dampen my spirits.  My brother and I took the max down to the run, Amanda and the kiddos were following shortly behind us.  They wanted to stay dry for as long as possible and I don’t blame them!  Once we got to my corral, my brother said okay, like okay bye.  I hadn’t really realized before this that now I was all on my own.  I walked in and immediately got in a huge line to go to the bathroom.  I’ve learned feeling like you need to go to the bathroom before your race is a lot mental.  You need to mentally know, you don’t need to go if that makes any sense.  Plus it wasn’t raining in the port a potties.  Haha!  When I came out, I went to the front of my corral.  Since there were so many runners, they let different corrals start at different times.  I was in the last corral.  How I got put in the last corral is anyone’s guess.  I’d guess because I hadn’t ran a marathon before so I didn’t have an expected finish time for them to pair me with.  So I’m standing there in the rain thinking where are all the pacers?  I didn’t get too worked up over it because I thought oh surely they’ll show up soon but they never did.  I was asking people around me but I’m pretty sure, no offense, I was with the reject group.  I mean these people looked at me like I was crazy, like they had no clue what pacers or pace groups even were.  So I fiddled with my iPod.  Nope no sound.  Was this really happening??!  No iPod, no pace group, pouring rain… Stay positive I thought.  You can’t give up now but there was a big part of me that just wanted to cry.  Finally I asked someone who knew something, she said I think the pacers are all in the groups ahead of us.  It finally clicked.  Oh my gosh I thought, I have no pace group.  This was slightly devastating to me because I did want to finish in a specific time and I knew how important it would be to be around people with the same goal.  Not only was it a time thing at this point but just being around people who had also been training.  The people in the groups ahead of me had already started to run.  Group F had just been given the go ahead.  I was in group G.  So I thought to myself do I run ahead?  I really didn't have time to think to be honest, so I just went.  So here I am running, thinking what if I were to be disqualified or something crazy for starting with a different group.  Thankfully I think the groups were more of an organization thing than a strict rule.  Nice organization…  I had never felt so discombobulated!  So I ran over the starting marker and started my Garmin.  I couldn’t see a pace group in sight and thought oh no, I may never reach any pacers.