Marathon Woman...

My sister ran her first marathon this weekend. Her oldest and youngest kids came to stay with me on Friday night. The middle son, Ethan had been having some behavioral issues for the past week so they decided to take him with them. When the other two questioned why Ethan got to go "stay in a hotel" and they didn't, he replied "Must be because I've been getting a lot of red cards". (They mark how well Ethan does each day at preschool by sending a card home, Green for Good, Yellow for Tolerable and Red is Absolutely Horrible).

About the marathon, I am happy to say she finished. But not only did she finish, she complete it under her "I Better Make It Under 5 hours" goal and to top it off even managed to reach her ideal goal of "Oh It Would Be Great to Make it Under 4.5 hours". Her finishing time was 4 hours and 24 minutes.

I CANNOT imagine running for that long consecutively, or that long in one day, and in the shape I'm in it would be pushing it to consider running 4 1/2 hours spread out over the entire week. And the craziest part is that even though she can hardly walk today due to sore muscles she is actually (well kinda) looking forward to doing it again in May.

She has always been the athletic one. She ran cross country in High School. My dad is also a runner, having run a ton of marrathons including Boston, New York, Berlin and Copenhagen. My dad flew in from Hawaii just to support her. He ran about 3 miles during the beginning with her and then jumped back in to coax her through the last 6 miles. She said that he was cracking her up during the last few miles. She couldn't have been doing over a 15 minute mile at that point but he kept encouraging her. "You are doing GREAT! Great job keeping such a steady pace!" I asked if it was similar to the coaching during childbirth (she had all three natural). Her reply was that it was a little but that this hurt far less so she knew could keep on.

I did ask her if she walked any of it and she said that it was very minimal, perhaps a total of 5 minutes the entire race. And the reason for not walking? She kept telling herself that if she walked then it would just take that much longer to get to the finish line and she just wanted it to be over.

I am so proud of her.