What an amazing and rewarding experience for me this past weekend!!! Ray and I flew to Sacramento, CA to do the 27th California International Marathon (CIM). It was Ray's sixth marathon and my FIRST marathon ever!!! I have been training for this for the last two and a half months. As it was getting closer to this day, I was definitely feeling nervous and of course excited at the same time.
The start line was at Folsom which is north-east of Sacramento. There were buses lined up to the galore to pick up the runners from different hotels on race day between 5 and 5:30am. So we were up at 4am to get ready for some breakfast and off we went to the bus downstairs of our hotel which was the Sheraton Grand located right beside the Convention centre for the expo marathon. The only thing we forgot to bring was Vector cereal. We tried looking for it in and around where we stayed especially at Safeway. No luck... :( I guess Vector is a canadian cereal thing...hmm. A friend of ours who lives in San Jose, who came up with his family to do the marathon, said that he has not heard of Vector before. So we just bought some banana granola to eat instead. My training group got together for a nice pasta meal the night before the race at Il Forniao restaurant. It was so good!!!
On the morning of the race, it was dark and cold at -2degC when we were lining up to get into the bus. As soon as we were in the bus we felt pretty warm and toasty. The ride was about 30mins to Folsom which was uphill all the way. It seemed to start pretty close to the prison which was on the south side of the lake. As soon as we got there we scrambled to the potty before the long line set in. Of course, I always have to use the potty at least twice. I chatted with some people on the way to the start wishing each other 'Good Luck' in the race. I was with the Pace group of 4:15 (the Pace Group leaders were Lisa and Mike). I was glad that I went with them because Mike entertained me all the way to Mile 9 and Dan whom I ran with once during the training told me how good Lisa was with the pace time. Mike was getting the group to relax by putting up our hands, shaking our hands, rolling our shoulders and thanking him at mile 25 for doing this little exercise :) At mile 9 or so I had to do a quick pee break and from then on I could barely catch up to the 4:15 group. The cold breeze and headwind didn't help at all. Though I could sort of see them from a distance I tried to keep up to them at about 5:45 to 6:00min/km pace. At mile 13 I could hardly see the pace group anymore and I was telling myself not to be discouraged if I lose them in sight. Luckily, I have my Garmin to pace me the whole way. At this point, I was really hoping to see mile 15 because the rest of the course was downhill and flat after that to the finish. Mile 15 came and it was a relief to see that. With carbo-pro, nuun diluted with water and shot-bloks as fuel, I was surprised to get a little "umph" here and then to get me to 5:35min/km at some parts of the race. As I always think, God is definitely my strength in this regard.
When I got into East Sacramento at around mile 20, I was so glad that my legs were still holding up and only then, I started to warm up a little bit but not much. The whole time I was cold even though I wore a long sleeve shirt!! The weather was definitely something I underestimated. As soon as mile 23 came, my legs were feeling so heavy and could barely hold 6:00mins/km. The last 2km felt like "it was never going to end"!!! My pace dropped to about 6:30 to 6:45mins/km and from then on, I knew that I wouldn't be able to do 4:15. A little voice told me to not give up and that finishing this race would be a huge accomplishment. As soon as I could see the finish line, my eyes started to well up and I had my hands up like a 'winner'!!! What an emotional moment for me and my husband who was standing by to greet me.
4:22:12 is my official finish chip time....I think I have tried my best and the most important thing is I survived my first marathon ;) Although Ray, my husband, didn't get a PB from this marathon I still think he finished with an awesome time of about 3:18:13. What an amazing race we have achieved together!!!
What a year it has been and December is nearing the end. Time sure goes by fast and it makes me think about what I've achieved this year. Well, it has definitely been a busy year for me. If you have read my previous blogs, I got married in the summer and then jetted off to my honeymoon in London and Paris. Sweet!!! As soon as I was back, I went on and trained for my first Marathon. Now, this was the most challenging thing I have ever done in my entire life!!! I just can't stop stressing how much commitment I had to put in to train for it. I only trained for 12 weeks but that was all the time I had left before the race in Sacramento, CA. With the injury and all that, it did set me back a little bit but it didn't stop me from continuing. With the encouragement from my husband, some massage from the chiropractor and God's guidance, I went on and ran my first ever marathon. I was so proud of myself for doing something that I never in a million years thought I could.
