Victory!

Dear all,

It's now more than four weeks since the marathon, and I just realized that I never let you all know how it went. Please don't hold it against me for too long--things have been busy around here, and I have tons of pictures to make it up to you (check them all out on facebook!).
I was very, very nervous leading up to Marathon Monday. My family had come in for the weekend, which was nice, but I was just feeling so tired, as if all the months of training had caught up to me in one weekend. We all had dinner at our house on Sunday--my family, my friends, my roommates--and the cooking really relaxed me. I had to go to bed super-early, because we had to catch a bus from the Boston Common before 7 the next morning.
The Common was a madhouse. Acres and acres of runners with neon yellow Marathon bags, people taking pictures, people stretching, Port-a-potty lines snaking back forever. The system was flawless: the entire length of Tremont St, from Beacon to Boylston, was lined with schoolbuses, one queue of runners for each schoolbus. The buses would fill up and drive away all together, and then another line of buses would come in. There were hundreds of them--it was exciting, exhausting, and more than a bit nauseating.
The ride out to Hopkinton takes forever. I'm not exaggerating--I really thought it was never going to end. Every minute on the Pike was, I kept thinking, another 10 minutes I had to run. The bus was hot, I was nauseous, people were either subdued from fear or gabbing wildly with their neighbors. People had to pee, people had to throw up, but everyone had to wait until we got to Hopkinton. FINALLY we pulled off the highway and saw the pilgrimage up close. It seemed like the whole town was out to see us off: lots of kids, lots of families, and thousands upon thousands of runners. We waited in a never-ending porta-potty line (it took us 45 minutes!), grabbed a snack, pinned our Gus, and made our way to the house generously volunteered for pre-race prep by one of our teammates. Some Gatorade, a quick stretch, and we were off to line up in the corrals!
Race corrals are usually determined by time: the faster you are, the closer to the start you begin. At Boston, however, everyone who's raising money for charity starts at the end, lined up in corrals by bib numbers that were assigned randomly. I was crammed into corral 22, together with people who run at all different paces. It felt like a cattle holding pen. When the gun went off, the mass of people surges forward, and all your best intentions to start slow kind of go out the window. They have to: if you really start slow, you'll get trampled. The roads through Hopkinton are lined with kids holding their hands out for high fives and runners sneaking out to pee in the woods after holding it in for too long in the corrals. The beginning feels amazing...until people start to pass you, and don't stop for 26 miles. The good thing about people passing you is that you get to see the backs of their shirts. Race jerseys are where people let out the most inspiring, private, and funny details of their lives. Most of them are either charity runners like me (Team Liver, the Jimmy Fund, Livestrong, Children's Hospital, Dana Farber, etc), along with plenty of running braggarts ("50th marathon, 50th state, 1st Boston"), and some jokesters (the back of my favorite race shirt, on a normal-looking guy: "I'm fat. Pick up the pace.") Lots of people ran in costume: I saw an Abe Lincoln, a hamburger, a banana, and I even ran with a guy in a chicken suit for a while. Maybe I was hungry and hallucinating, but I'm pretty sure.
Around mile 3 or 4, MUCH earlier than I expected, my calf started to hurt. Not a lot at first, but I knew it was going to be a rough day. I was so happy, though, and in such a good mood that I was able to separate the pain from my mood--it might slow me down, but I wasn't going to let it bum me out. Race day was AWESOME. We had perfect weather (chilly, a little overcast), and the crowd was amazing. I saw the first person that I knew in Ashland, and then my parents and sister surprised me at the Framingham train station. I had run every mile of the race before, but once we crossed the Natick town line and it became really familiar territory, I knew I had it in the bag. People were having barbecues and holding up the Red Sox score (though we passed Natick center at about 2:15, and nobody knew who had won the marathon!). We passed Elvis impersonators, Yankee Doodle Drag Queens, and the entire Wellesley scream tunnel (diminished, I imagine, from what it had been an hour earlier), and made it to TNT's Mission Mile at the Wellesley Community Center at mile 15. My parents were there, and, crucially, one of the coaches was there to massage my sore calf a bit. I took a much needed break (if a little too long), and kept going--my dad joined in for about half a mile, which was really nice. I did start feeling tired around then, and needed to walk up the hill over the highway into Newton Lower Falls. I made it to the fire station, where there was a giant party and a boom box blasting Queen's "We are the Champions," and all of a sudden my eyes welled up behind my sunglasses. My longest pre-race run had ended at the firehouse, but I had 9 more miles to go. I started heading up and up, waiting to see the friends that I knew would be there to join in. Running and walking, running and walking, and all of a sudden I saw the three guys that I was waiting for, all of whom had a tiny baggie of pretzels that I had given them the night before to give to me on the course. They had been waiting in the cold for me for hours, and I was SO happy to see them. I was in quite a lot of pain at that point--my right hip was hurting, probably from compensating for my sore calf, my back felt like hamburger, and my feet kept wanting to cramp up into foot-fists, but I was thrilled. I ate some pretzels, got my leg rolled out by my coach, who was waiting near the bottom of Heartbreak Hill, and headed up. Slowly. At BC, two more of my friends joined us, and me and my entourage started on the last 6 miles toward Copley. Of course, I was well behind the majority of the race, and as the afternoon went on and on, the crowd of spectators got drunker and drunker. Beacon St was like a frat party. For a while we ran behind two guys in Speedos running with their friend. Lots of cheering, lots of drunk college kids. After a while, it hurt more to walk than to run, so I just kept at it. When I did have to walk, to get a drink or something, I had to do a little Grandma shuffle to get my feet moving again before I could really pick them up off the ground. I was so happy to have the support of my friends--more people were waiting for me in Kenmore with a big sign, but I almost missed them because I was so focused. Let's just say that the last 6 miles would have been VERY different had my incredible friends not been there.
They left me at the corner of Comm and Mass to do the last .2 on my own: I finally got to take that right on Hereford, and that left on Boylston. Boylston street is much, much longer than you think it is, but I could see the finish line just ahead of me. I waved frantically at the announcer, trying to get him to read off my name, but no such luck. Crossing the finish line, I almost lost it. I was freezing, in pain, starving, and I had never been happier.
The finish area is blocks and blocks long: first you get your mylar blanket, then your water, then you get your chip removed and they give you your medal, then there's food, then you have to head up to where the buses are with all your stuff, then, finally, I had to turn back around and go all the way back to the Copley Marriott where my team's suite was and where my family was meeting me. Turned out that my parents had missed me crossing the finish line--they thought they had been waiting at mile 13 in Wellesley instead of mile 15, so they hadn't expected me to finish so soon. I saw them, changed my clothes, stretched out, ate something, and lay down on a massage table for some TLC. All of a sudden, every muscle started cramping, I was shivering like a hypothermic, and hyperventilating something awful. Beautiful stuff. There I was, lying on my back on a table, in a ton of pain, freaking out, with my mother holding my hand and a strange man telling me to relax. I felt like I was giving birth. Eventually I warmed up and calmed down, and I was able to get into the car and head home for my well-earned burrito and my ice bath.
I wasn't able to move around much for about a day or so, and I didn't stop eating for about a week, but I did wear The Jacket more or less nonstop for a while.

I'm still in a little pain--my calf has gotten better (it was massively swollen and sore), but the hip flexor that was compensating for it is still bothering me. I've been out for a couple of runs, mixed heavily with biking and yoga, and my PT says that the Mooseman half-iron relay 3 weeks from now is well within my reach.

What amazed me most about the marathon is how much fun it was. I really wasn't tired, I wasn't in a bad mood--I was in pain, but that kind of pain doesn't ruin your day the way a blister would, for example. I finished strong, I finished standing, and I didn't finish last. And I was happy. And that's about all I could have asked for. I'm so proud of myself, and so thankful to my family and friends for being there to support me.

Pictures soon!
Shari