Return from the Dead!

Hello out there! It's December 14 th. I haven't written anything since October 17th. Wow!!!OK not really...I knew that I haven't written.
Marine Corps Marathon- Where to begin? Well it came time to run my first full marathon. I was really excited to be running it. My mom and I flew up to Washington D.C. and met up with my running group, had some lunch with them, went to the expo with them etc. It was fun! I bought myself a few things to commemorate the experience but gosh were the MCM official gear expensive! Race day finally came. I didn't get much sleep the night before. I set 2 alarms to make sure I got up and a friend of mine called to make sure we were up...alsways good to have backups...lol. It was cold out, and I was bundled with what I was wearing while I raced. I had gloves, hat, jacket, shorts, etc. We made our way to the metro station and then made our way to the starting line. Let me tell you, what a walk it was from the metro to the baggage drop off, to the start line. I lined myself up in the 4:30-5:00 area. I met someone there that I talked with until the start. When the gun went off, it took about 30 mins for us to move and cross the start line...thats a long time...but with 40,000 people I guess you have to figure as much.
I was hoping that I would get to see my mom along the way, but pretty much knew it was going to be impossible.
I was running great for a while. I wanted to stay at or under 10:45 min/miles....I did that until mile 15 or so. At that point something happened and I felt tired...not even so much that but drained I guess. I said to myself I am not stopping until mile 20. I kept running until I hit that mile 20 mark. It was nice..but I had to stop. I wanted to call Ian and hope that he could give me some motivation to run again. I started running again shortly after that and I swear the next 6 miles was the longest EVER! Unfortunately, I ran, walked, ran, walked the rest of the way. The last mile I ran the whole way, and it was tough. I think the longest I had run before that was 20, and and 18.
I made it!I finished my first marathon!!!! I finished in 5:14:53 I think it was.....(it gets hard to remember the seconds in these races). Afterwards I was tired, and very shakey. I needed to sit down so badely. But they shuffled you through to the medal area and then to the picture area and then to the baggage pickup which was like another mile down the road. After I got my bag, I finally met up with my mom and I sat down right there on the road. I took my sneakers off ( cause my feet hurt) and did not wear them the rest of the way back to the hotel.
All in all it was a great experience! One that I did not want to do again right away, but this week have decided to shoot for it again and this time get a PR. So my next adventure will be the Gasparilla Marathon in Tampa February 2010!