Marathon

The Yoga workout on P90X is one of the hardest workouts in my opinion. 90 minutes of trying to contort your body in ways that I absolutely can't do. However, you try your best and make it through. The first 45 minutes are the true grind going from downward dog to the warrior positions over and over. After the first 45 minutes there is a one minute transition before the final 45 minutes of easier poses. During that 1 minute rest period Tony Horton looks at the camera and tells you "Take in the fact that you just did that." Since crossing the finish line of the St. George Marathon yesterday around 1 pm, that's pretty much the only thing I can think.

Rachel and I went on a cruise last year in August with some of our friends. I gained about 10-15 pounds during that week from eating nonstop and carried that through the end of the year being in the absolute worst physical condition of my life. I look at the pictures from our cruise and I am absolutely disgusting. While I've only lost about 20 lbs in actual weight since then, my body composition is obviously much better, and yet there is still about 50-75 lbs worth of improvement I can make. Anyway, I bring it up to help myself realize what a crazy year it's been. Definitely the year of the run for me. With my first half marathon in April and now this, I've been running consistently since February and culminate with the St. George Marathon. I'm hopeful that I keep up the habit to some extent, but I will look to start doing some other types of exercises as well since I've avoided everything but running due to the training "focus" all year.

My time certainly wasn't spectacular: 6:02.39 was the official time posted in the paper today in St. George, but my entire goal was to simply finish and I did just that. In fact, even though it was a slow pace, which I planned on, it was probably the best run I've ever had. I plowed all the way to mile 22 on a good system right to plan before I ran out of gas and had to walk/shuffle the final 4 miles. Even when walking I was still shuffling pretty quick, kind of a imitation run I guess. I used a book called "The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer" by David Whitsett, Forrest Dolgener, and Tanjala Kole, which I highly recommend to any first timers. The key focus is to train for and finish a marathon. They emphasize not setting a time goal since the accomplishment itself is the goal. Time goals can be set for future marathons once you "know" what you're getting into. There are also a lot of mental trainings they like you to do to help your focus and positive outlook on finishing the race. I feel these things are all important for sure. I never doubted from start to finish whether I was going to finish. I knew the entire way. People asked when did I hit "the wall". I'm not sure if I did or not. My understanding of "the wall" was the feeling of exhaustion and a mental thought of "I absolutely can't go any farther". I can definitely say I truly started to slow down and walk more than I planned on around mile 22, but I never doubted finishing at all. In fact, at mile 18 I was right on pace for where I thought I would be and it pumped me up to know I was entering uncharted territory and I was definitely going to finish. My mental timeframe from the beginning was 6 hours since that is the rough time frame of the race, and I was within 2 1/2 minutes of that time, pretty good pace throughout if you ask me.

Coming around the corner for the last quarter mile was an incredible feeling. My buddy Jeff Davis made his wife and son wait three hours after seeing his dad finish just to see me come around the corner. When you've been all alone on the journey, it's awesome to see a friendly face give you the final push. My mother-in-law was on the side just a short bit later with a "go b-ball" poster and Rachel, Kamille, and Cannon were right at the finish line with posters for me too (Grant was taking care of Brooklyn for all of us). What a feeling.

Thanks to my sweet sister Jackie for trying to challenge me back in February to run with her. It got me off my butt and doing something to get active again. The St. George Marathon is a lottery and if you don't get in the first 2 times you are guaranteed in the third year. I told her after the half marathon in April, "You know, if I could keep running relatively consistently for the next couple years I think in three years I'd be ready for a marathon. Go ahead and sign us up for St. George. I'm sure we won't get in this year so we can just start the process of the three year wait." Well, she did something funny when she registered us because I got in and she didn't, but in any case I was able to accomplish this year what I originally thought would take three years to build up to. It's amazing what your body can do when you push it. Maybe in three years we'll just actually run one together. . . with the Rache Train too!