My Last Marathon

Last weekend I ran my fifth and final marathon - the Nike Women's up in San Francisco - with my good friends Niki and Jennifer. If you read my blog, you'll know that I couldn't wait for this thing to be over. I was burned out on running. The longest distance in my training was 15 miles (it's recommended to go up to 20-22) and I hardly ran at all the last couple months due to my hectic travel schedule. Ironically, out of all the marathons I've completed I felt the best after this one - not much soreness, pain or agony during or after. And I finished in 4:53. I think I'm onto something with my "less is more" training regimen. It helped to have support from my friends Sara and Drew and my honey Benjamin during the last half. Thanks guys for coming out! They were able to follow along most of the course on their mountain bikes. It's nice to see familiar faces when you're out there. The event was a lot of fun despite the hilly course. Nike provided a lot of frills - oxygen bar, chocolate station, Tiffany finisher's necklace and most impressive of all...free shoes! There was one caveat with the free shoes though - you had to stop and change out of your old ones at mile 23. They were promoting their new Nike+ running shoes with the built in iPod nano which is a pretty cool system that tracks your workout stats. I wouldn't normally recommend stopping so far into the race, let alone wear brand new shoes during a marathon, but I couldn't resist the temptation of free shoes. Given that this was my final 26.2 mile race, you'd think I'd be overwhelmed with joy and relief after it was over. Not so. Some sick and twisted part of me wants to do it again. But then I think about all the training and that 'winging it' probably isn't the best strategy especially now that I'm older and more vulnerable to injuries. I think I'll just stick to half marathons for the time being.

Hanging out at the Expo/I found my name on the wall of participants!