As you may know from reading here, I had a very hard time the 8 weeks leading up to this race. So, I’m not going to sugar coat it and tell you it was amazing, I trained hard, I ran hard, and I did amazing- I’m going to tell you the ugly truth. I didn’t train much, I felt awful, and It SUCKED. Not every training plan will go according to plan, and for sure not every race.  I will say, one day, I will be back to race CIM. It was a great course, great volunteers, and overall a fun race. But, back to the ugly details:

I was planning on killing this race. When I finished St George I was already planning my training schedule on the flight back home. I had 8 weeks between races and was ready to get to work. I had a 2 week recovery planned, 4 weeks of hard training, and a 2 week taper on the calendar. I was ready to train hard and dominate CIM.

My body had other plans.

It started with strep, then tonsillitis, then bronchitis. Once I was over that-I had about a week of health before my entire family came down with the stomach flu. It was brutal. Once recovering from all of this…it was time to taper- insert eye roll here. My plan of attack was to just hang on for as long as I could and then just finish. I knew I could not race it as planned, and had come to accept that and was ready to just have some fun.

Mom and I flew out to San Francisco to hang out with Ashley for a few days before. [side note- our Mom is amazing. CIM was her 2nd marathon!] On Saturday, the day before the race, the three of us road-tripped it down to Sacramento. We stayed at the beautiful Westin Sacramento and were thoroughly enjoying ourselves – we visited the expo and ate a great dinner…

About 6pm shiz hit the fan. It was then that my body revolted against me even more- an hour later I was in a minor emergency place with a painful bladder/kidney infection – fever and all. We gathered up my antibiotics, a giant jug of cranberry juice and decided we would just see how I felt in the morning. The next morning was better, but not great; however, I was there and told myself even if I had to walk it, that I had already bought a shirt that said CIM 26.2 or nothing so… 26.2 it was going to be!

So here is your ‘real’ picture, behind the scenes, not the sugar coated ones:

 I ran the first half in about 1:42…. and it was at mile 14 that I said to myself, why are you doing this? You can’t keep this up the whole time feeling like this! So, I backed off and decided to not hurt myself or push myself beyond my abilities that day. There was lots of walking, plenty of texting and complaining to my husband and sister, and calls to encourage my mom by telling her how much I was hurting too! I rounded the final corner and saw Ashley, some of our friends and completed my 4th marathon in 4:15. It was not my fastest, not my slowest, but probably the one I am most proud of. Just shows- on a small level, when things seem to be going against you, you can still do hard things.

Our mom finished a bit later, taking 40 minutes off of her previous marathon time!She’s a rockstar. I love trips like this with mom and Ash. I get so emotional at finish lines, especially seeing people I love – and people I don’t know!- encourage, support, and crush accomplishments like this! Like you’ve heard before-

If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.