Actual ING GEORGIA MARATHON RACE REPORT

Sorry to keep you on the edge of your seat! I figured I should at least post something so none of you were worried and they could call off the searches for the girls wearing "Hot Pants" in ATL! Any of you who missed the beginning...I encourage you to read below first. Its pretty humerous!

So where did I leave off? We got ready...got the hot pants on...did a lil photo shoot...put the body bags over our head...and headed to the MARTA station. We accidentally parked in a "taxi only" spot, but were afraid we would miss the train if we moved the car. So instead we worried all day if our car would be there when this mess was over. It was 40 degrees and pouring rain...our body bags (aka trash bags) were helping us to stay sort of warm and dry. But we did look funny shivering and shaking to death in our hot pink spandex and body bags. FUNNY THING! Someone looked at us and goes "wow you girls do this all the time huh?" WHATTTTT????? Me and Dani were like ughhhhhhh.....clearly not...this is our first. haha.

So we get to the Olympic Park..I mean how cool is that..to start a marathon where the OLYMPICS were?? It was just really neat....and we could see all the wheel chair racers warming up. There was also a guy there with double prosthetics...and we saw him stretching. We started getting really pumped up!! 15,000 people all came here to do this....and you could feel the excitement in the air. However...we were one of the elite that had the orange numbers. Only 2200 ran the FULL Marathon...everyone else had BLUE numbers..and were running the half. This was a little intimidating.

Finally the race was off....first thing we did????? CLIMB A HILL!!! I should have known right there what I was facing. From there on it was 26 miles of straight up and down..including a straight up at the finish line. It was so flippin ridiculous its not even funny. Sarah, who ran the half counted the hills and said there were 28 hills in just the half marathon. Heres an elevation profile. We started the race off at a nice and easy pace. W e knew we were going go to have to keep it slow if we wanted to finish alive. The hills were relentless though. As soon as you finished going downhill..you looked ahead and you were headed straight uphill again. You could hear people mumbling under their breath that this is the most challenging course they have ever done. The first couple miles went pretty eventless. We stopped at every water station and had a few sips...as that was our plan.

By mile 3 my knees were shot. I mean completely DONE! I have had knee problems on and off for a few years...but I had never felt pain like this before. I didn't want to say anything about it because I didn't want to bring any negativity to our race at this point..but finally by mile 4 I quietly asked Danielle "Is there anything hurting on you?". She said her knees and ankles...and said it was because of the hills. Many of the hills we climbed had 4% and 5% inclines...and our bodies were just NOT used to that. We tried to take it easy on the downhills as to spare our quads...but it was just so tough. I kept thinking "how am I ever going to finish this race if my knees are hurting this bad at MILE 3!!!!!!"

But as fate would have it...we kept on going.They were having a contest for the best cheering section and whoever won they would build a childrens fitness center in that neighborhood. GOOD IDEA ATLANTA!!! I Swear this was probably some of the best crowd support a marathon has ever had. Some stations were themed..like mardi gras...where they were all dressed up and playing jazz music with sax's and had costumes on.Other ones just had tons of people with cowbells. It was so amazing..and picked us up when we were struggling. The words and signs along the road..
"If marathons were easy, we would be running too"
"We are sooooo proud of you"
"You are doing amazing...and you loook good too!! Dang girls...look at those pants!"
I mean it was endless...support. SOme would even say "You are almost to the top of this hill..then its downhill!!" Ughh yeah...for a second buddy!

Everything was going pretty flawless until Mile 17. Then all of a sudden Dani was like "Oww..I think I have a cramp in my foot". We started walking and I was trying to show her how to stretch it. She wanted to just "run it out"...so we started jogging again. A minnute or so later...she almost fell over and yelled out in pain. Everyone kinda stopped to see what happened. She hurt something inside her foot...and it plagued her for the rest of the race. She could NOT put her heel down whatsoever without shooting pains up her leg. She had to run on her TIP TOE for the last 9 miles. She looks at me and goes "Its only 9 more miles right?" I guess she said I gave her this really disgusted look like "ughh..only?" haha.

We were pretty determined the whole race to finish it. I could not wait to get to mile 20 because I knew no matter what I would finish if I made it that far. Poor Danielle though! You could see the pain in her face...as she limped/ran...on her one TIP TOE! I kept asking if she was ok..and there was no way in hell I was going to leave her behind. By this point...everything was starting to hurt.

By mile 22..I could tell that I needed to start power walking a little bit. My knee pain had gone numb a while back..but I could feel in my ankles that if I didn't start walking a little bit I was going to injure myself. I powerwalked a mile....loooked at my Garmin...and realized I just powerwalked a mile faster than I ran the last mile!! Talk about discouraging...haha. It was a fight to the finish. By this time Danielle was in severe pain..I had some pain issues going on. I had a HUGE knot up in my neck/shoulder area from my previous shoulder surgery. It felt like it was on fire.

The sickest thing of all...is putting a hill at the finishline after 26 miles of hills. I couldn't believe it! But we grabbed hands and started to pick up the pace. We could hear them call our name out on the loud speaker...and we threw our arms the air...while holding hands...and stepped over the finish line. Icould not even believe we did it...just as planned...every step together. Our official time was 5:19.

Things I consumed on the course
-lots of gatorade
-lots of water
-handful of cheez its
-bananas, oranges, strawberries
-2 jolly ranchers
-pack of luna moons (dropped one)
-half of a vanilla GU
-gummie worm
-2 donut holes from krispy kreme
- A BEER AT MILE 20!!!!!!!! Dani had a "will run for beer" shirt on...and it was our goal to drink a beer at some point on the course. We were out there to have fun and finish..we knew we werent going to break any records...so we just wanted to have ablast

I thought I consumed some rather funny things..so I thought I would post them. Also I ended up with an orange ING hat. It helped combat the 40 degrees and harsh winds. Oh yeah...heres this too

mile 1- 10:24 total ascent 471 ft total descent 531
mile 2- 11:03 351 ft : 300 ft
mile 3-11:32 160 ft: 254 ft
mile 4-11:57 269 ft: 168 ft
mile 5- 11:04 122 ft: 169 ft
mile 6- 11:36 144 ft: 154 ft
mile 7-11:45 112 ft: 122 ft
mile 8-11:16 124 ft: 135 ft
mile 9-11:24 154 ft: 165 ft
mile 10-11:31 149 ft: 162 ft
mile 11-11:59 248 ft: 199 ft
mile 12-11:55 155 ft: 154 ft
mile 13-11:45 175 ft: 173 ft
mile 14-11:30 162 ft: 198 ft
mile 15-11:15 220 ft: 193 ft
mile 16-11:31 262 ft: 360 ft
mile 17-13:18 350 ft: 329 ft - this is where Dani got hurt..hmm wonder why?
mile 18-12:57 238 ft: 186 ft
mile 19-13:36 157 ft: 129 ft
mile 20- 13:08 305 ft: 189 ft
mile 21-12:26 162 ft:163 ft
mile 22-11:42 258 ft: 192 ft
mile 23-13:04 283 ft: 322 ft
mile 24-12:54 712 ft: 639 ft
mile 25-12:12 580 ft: 638 ft
mile 26-13:43 258ft: 169 ft


I feel like this is getting too long..so I will finish the rest later. But at least you got race details now! haha ..the rest is good tooo though...STAY TUNED!