Picking up from yesterday –
I whip out a map on my phone to try to stay on course. We do our best – all of us various groups of runners. There are so many right turns! We just keep going farther and farther out. (I never realized how seemingly-late that cool garage comes in this race… Granted, the first two times I saw it, I was only doing the second half. So, of course it felt like it came much sooner, because it did.)
This year, I didn’t see the cupcake people I’d seen in a past year… Maybe they weren’t there, or maybe I was just that far behind!
So, me and these other runners run and run. Thankfully a water stop is still open and the person tells us we’re doing fine and to run straight down from there until we reach the water, then go left to the finish.
And we do just that.
We do kind of reunite with runners, but we’re also reuniting with this huge crowd headed to a baseball game at the stadium. Who even knows who’s who anymore.
Toward the end, I see a sign – not like a sign somebody made, but one of those big lit-up highway signs that you’d think would be there to say something important that said, “Hella yoga butt” instead. And I thought that was hilarious.
Finally, I get to the actual end. They had taken the big finish line down, but thankfully – oh goodness thankfully – moved the timing mat to the sidewalk, those sweet angels.
So, ultimately, I don’t feel great about this race. I know we kept following a map and kept seeing landmarks and water stops and vehicles, but I do not feel 100% confident (or even 50% confident for that matter) that I ran the course actually exactly as it was supposed to be run.
Every year, I do a marathon. That’s a promise I made to myself. This was not my “marathon of the year.” So, thankfully there wasn’t anything “technically” on the line with this one – even though, obviously, I never want to screw up a marathon. (But it could be worse, I suppose, is the point.)
Anyway, I don’t know what to do with my medal – since I most definitely did the “spirit” of a marathon, and my phone says I logged over 26.2 miles… It’s like maybe I could display it. dunno. I’m iffy about it all…
But either way, I had a nice time. And I saw my great friends who live out there and we had pancakes. And all was well in the world. And you can bet I will be back next year with a vengeance!