26.2 Miles

Last year my sister in laws sister in law (if that makes sense) ran the St George Marathon and I went to go watch her finish. Listening to tons of people cheering on all these runners who they had no idea who they were and giving the runners a little motivation, gave me motivation to be apart of it. Being surrounded by the cheering and support system made me say that I was going to run the marathon next year. I wanted to be apart of that, I wanted that feeling of crossing the finish line after achieving such a great accomplishment. Six months later, I was signing up for exactly that.

For the last 6 months, Kurt and I have been training for the St George Marathon. We woke up at 6 am that first day of April to secure ourselves a spot. And that was the day Kurt said he would not cut his hair until after we had ran. I have always wanted to do a marathon when I was in high school, I just never buckled down and did it. Running is a lot easier to do when you have a partner to run with you. Kurt has been such a motivation to me through it all. It got really hard once we passed the half marathon mark for training. We had never run more than 13 miles before. I was beginning to hate running. We were running so much, I didn't get to sleep in, ever, our saturday mornings were based around waking up at 5 in the morning to go run for two plus hours. It was not the ideal weekend, that's for sure. Until Labor day weekend we were in St George and decided to run 18 miles of the course. It turned out to be one of the best runs that we have ever had. It went by super fast, our bodies did not ache, and it was just enjoyable. It made us both see why people love to run lots of marathons. If every run I had was like that day, I would run a lot more marathons too. But as it got closer to the day of the race, I wasn't feeling so confident anymore. We had only ran up to 18 miles, and 8 more miles is an additional hour or so. I had initially had two goals in mind. 1) run all miles under 10 minutes, 2) run it in less than 4.5 hours. After running the 18 miles, I thought it would be better to do 3:59, just under the 4 hour mark. But as soon as we started the race, that quickly faded and went back to my original goal time. The start line was crowded with lots of intimidating people who all looked like this was gonna be a piece of cake for them. It is always nerve racking to know you are about to run a distance that you have never done before. Even during our trainings, I would always get so nervous for the long runs of 13+ miles. You never know how your body is going to react.

Once we started I knew I was going to be in a little bit of trouble. Kurt and I both decided not to wear headphones because we have always just talked on our runs and it made them go by faster. Not this time. There were so many people around us and I think I was just too distracted by the hoards of people around me, that I didn't really talk. I was too focused on the runners and not so focused on my body, my form, and my breathing. We made a goal that we would not stop and walk, to just keep running the whole time. We made sure we fueled up at every station, even if we were running a little bit slower just to do so. Everything after mile 18 was really hard. Mostly because we had never run further than that. And I also knew that we were getting that much closer to coming into St George. Our family would be waiting for us on Bluff street somewhere. As soon as I heard them yelling and cheering us on, out of no where, this flood of emotions wanted to escape out and start crying. I had always heard of people crying during the marathon and other things, but I never understood why, and to be honest, I still don't. I don't know why I wanted to cry, I just did. Having that support system made me push myself a little bit harder and knew that I was almost there. I couldn't have done it without them. After we had passed our fans, it was only 2 miles until the finish. The last two miles was through town were there were people filling every spot on the side of the road just cheering you on. Coming around the last corner, you could see the finish line for what felt like eternity. It was not getting any closer. But somewhere inside me I had a little bit of energy left to push all that I had left. At the very last seconds of crossing the finish line, Kurt grabbed my hand and we ran through together.

What a relief it was to be able to stop running. Even though at that point, I felt like I was going to collapse on the ground if I stopped moving. All we wanted to do was go home. We quickly stretched, took some pictures with the family and then had to take the eternity long walk back to the car. Even though I was tired and I was hurting, I beat my two goals. We ran every mile under ten minutes and we got a 4:08, which is close enough to 3:59. It was one of the hardest things I have done in my life, but it was well worth it. I am so grateful that I had Kurt by my side the whole entire time pushing me and helping me continue to move my legs. I am glad that is something that we were able to do together. I think it will teach us many great things in the future because we did it together. We were there side by side during this little trial that we created for ourselves. And we both made it out alive.