Picking up from yesterday –
Hot, hot, hot. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.
At mile 22, I wanted to cry because people had cupcakes and they seemed like basically the most amazing things in the world at that point.
I stopped by the table and thanked them profusely. They said they do it every year, and earlier that day they practically had a smorgasbord with pizza and more… but everything but the cupcakes had been eaten.
I asked, “Who are you? What group are you with?”
They said they weren’t with any group – that I could just think of them as the “mile 22 givers.”
I adore them.
Speaking of things that were cool, there were these digital boards where your friends and family could leave messages for you. All the boards were set by timing mats. That way, the board would know when someone had crossed the mat and that person’s family’s message would show up.
How amazing and super cool is that?! I didn’t spread that link around and beg everyone I know to send me some love… but seeing how cool it looked to see friends making videos for their runners… I am all about doing that if I ever do this race again!
(And I am all about putting that in if I ever plan a race, because that is freaking awesome.)
At some point within the 2nd half, I realized most likely a 6:30 is not happening. I’d only picked 6:30 as my goal because there were warnings from the L.A. Marathon that if you ran slower than that, they’d start taking the course down around you.
You could still finish – as the finish line was open for 8 hours – but you wouldn’t have any support. (Of course, this seemed less threatening since there wasn’t any Gatorade for the whole race anyway… :-P)
But still, I get lost everywhere I go. And I did not want to be roaming Los Angeles trying to find the finish without the help of the official course.
But thankfully, the course never got taken down around me. And I still did get a personal record – just not as big of one as I wanted.
In the beginning of this story, I talked about how any anger or frustration I had was being used to push through that first half. And while I think it’s so awesome to use running as an outlet for that, I don’t want any grudges or anything taking up my normal brain space on a day-to-day basis. So, I knew that I had to get all of that completely off of me before the end of the race.
This is where I’ll pick up in two days (after a TPiR anniversary post tomorrow).