Wherein I ate an entire strawberry cake.

Well, OK. Not the entire cake. But, most of it. Well, not most of it. But two pieces anyway. Everyone knows that strawberry cake is my most favoritest cake ever. I served it at my wedding. Cuz it was my wedding and I could do what I wanted… And I wanted strawberry. Thank you, Mom, for baking this for me whilst I was napping this afternoon. I’d had the ingredients for a while. They’d been staring at me relentlessly from the pantry shelf. The other day I told Shannon that “On Sunday I was going to make that cake and eat the whole thing!” And I did…. almost.

Ok, ok, enough with the strawberry cake. Why was I so wild and crazy eating two pieces of strawberry cake today? I RAN 26.2 MILES, THAT’S WHY. Or 26.46 if you ask Limeade, my Garmin running watch. Best 26.2/.46 miles ever! Seriously. It was a great day. We had awesome weather, just like we asked for. There was a bit of a breeze (a 19 mph breeze), but, hey. It’s Oklahoma. What else could we expect?

Since it had been three and a half years since I ran a full marathon, I kind of went into this with the mindset that it was basically like running my first marathon all over again. Based on my last half marathon time, the McMillion Running Calculator projected I could finish a full marathon in 3:59:54. So, I went out with the hope that I could finish somewhere between 4:00 and 4:10. If I could have broke 4:00, I would have been ecstatic. But, I also wanted to play it a little safe.

L to R: Me, Abbie, Kristen, Tori, Kate, Kim, Wendi, Kristi

There were six of us from runHers who planned to run together, Wendi, Abbie, Kristen, Tori, Kim and me. Our hope was to run negative splits to try to head off the north wind we would face going out (which was north and then by the lake) and then use the tail wind to our advantage to makeup time coming back. We also took the opportunity to talk to Bart Yasso, aka “The Mayor of Running,” when he visited the runHers booth at the OKC Memoiral Expo about what he would recommend. He had the same idea we did. So, this plan ended up working pretty well.

We planned to break up the marathon into 4 mile chunks. We wanted to do our first 4 miles around a 9:30 pace, which we did pretty well. We’d run the next two 4 block chunks around 9:15, and try to get to half way in about 2 hours, 3 minutes. From there we would re-asses, see how we felt and start running a bit faster every 4 miles after that until we hit 20. Once we were inside a 10K, we’d continue to get faster and try to finish as strong as possible, with anything under 3 miles just going as hard as we can. I always tell myself, “I can do anything for 3 miles!”

I really liked breaking things down into four mile chunks. It gave us a goal to shoot for, and made it seem less daunting. Four miles is much easier to think about than 26.2! This also gave us a good remind of when to do our Gu or energy gels. I pretty much ate my way through this marathon. For breakfast I had my standard pre-race meal: two biscuits with grape jelly. Then, I packed Chocolate Outrage Gu, Shot Blocks, pretzles and Extreme Bean Sport Jelly Beans. Here’s what I did during the race:

• Mile 4: 3 Shot Blocks
• Mile 8: 2 Shot Blocks
• Mile 13: Gu
• Mile 17: 3 Shot Blocks
• Mile 20: Gu
• Miles 21-25: 2 Sport Beans every mile
• Alternated Powerade and water at every stop until mile 23
• Grabbed a handfull of pretzels here and there at the stops where I drank Powerade
• Always tried to do my energy Gu or blocks around the stops where I drank water (to avoid too much sugar at once)

This worked well for me. I will say that those gels, Gu and beans will do a number on your stomach post-race. I don’t think I felt quite right until about 6:00 this evening. Of course that was about the time that I had the strawberry cake… so maybe that’s what really helped.

Kate, her boyfriend, Andy, and Wendi’s son, Hayden, followed us along the course cheering and holding up signs. Also, Abbie’s family met us several times with kazoos, bells and cheers. People, if you ever have the opportunity to watch a race. Cheer for whomever is going by. I can’t even begin to tell you how encouraging this is to us runners! Seriously.

Kate's Boyfriend Andy

Hayden and another runHers gal holding Kate's signs.

And, Reaghan. Aww, she wrote me the nicest little letter, y’all. I carried it in my running belt with me. So, so sweet.

Around mile 14 or so when we decided to drop down to a 9:00 pace, Tori decided she was going to stick with the 4:15 pace group. Then at about 21, Wendi and Kristen were having trouble with their IT bands. Abbie, Kim and I were feeling strong so we pressed on. Those last 4 miles were hard. Man, I thought I was going to die. Or throw up. Or throw up and then die. It was so helpful to have Abbie there giving me encouragement.

Abbie and I crossed the finish line within seconds of each other. Abbie had 4:00:56 and I finished with a time of 4:01:01. I couldn’t be happier with this time. It was so awesome to run so far with such great girlfriends. Truly a bond you can never understand until you’ve done it together. I am so glad I decided to do the full marathon before I left Oklahoma. I just don’t know what I’m going to do without my runHers girls!

I am also so thankful for all the prayers and thoughts from everyone today! Going into it with a questionable foot was scary. But it did great the whole time and actually my knees hurt worse than anything after the run. Ha. I’m anxious to see what I will feel like in the morning. Hello, ibuprofen!

Tagged as: Kami, M, Marathon, OKC Memorial