After much debate about whether I should or shouldn’t, I did. I ran it. Slowly, but I ran it. My end time was 6:00:56, which is my slowest marathon ever, but I’m proud of myself for getting through it.

This time, I was untrained for it. My only run in 2008 that was in the double digit miles was the 10 miler that Caroline and I ran on New Years Day. After that, I was out of training, either because of injury or sickness. I considered skipping the race altogether but I decided that it was worth starting at least as a training run and that I could simply stop if ever I hit the point of feeling like I was injuring myself.

Of course, once I got in the race, I really didn’t want to stop. I would have, though, had I hit injury point, but I didn’t. So I plugged through it. I stayed on a 12 minutes per mile pace for about the first 11 miles, and then I slowed down dramatically and ended up doing a run/walk much of the way. I’m proud of myself for continuing on and knew that it was important to me not to quit just out of being tired. Hurt is one thing, but tired is another. Tired isn’t reason enough to quit anything.

This morning I’m feeling good, and I’m looking forward to regrouping to approach the next few months. At the end of March, I have a half Ironman in Galveston. Then I’ll do the Olympic distance race over Memorial Day in late May. Then the big race in June. It’s astonishing how quickly June seems to be approaching.

I should also mention that Caroline successfully finished the marathon too. She earned her Distance Challenge jacket and very quickly went from “I’ll never do this again” to “I think I’ll do another.” Sounds to me like she caught the bug.