Yesterday Trevor and I ran the Richmand, VA marathon. Well, Trevor actually ran it and I more “barely finished it”.
I had been training for this for several months. We originally got involved with this because my sister wanted to run her first marathon. We did a quick search for a marathon that wouldn’t be on a Sunday and Richmond came up. It also said that it was ranked by Runner’s World as the county’s “friendliest” marathon. Well, that sounded like a good one for first timers.
Trevor had just run his first one in Salt Lake last June and decided he was up for another one. I had just had ACL surgery back in February but had sworn that I wouldn’t play basketball again until I finished a marathon. So we all decided to do it. We actually initially recruited some of my other siblings but they dropped out pretty quickly.
Tiffany ended up pulling a muscle several weeks before the race so it was just down to Trevor and me.
I felt like I was prepared. I had gotten in all of my long runs before the race and had done all right with them. The one thing I hadn’t done was much hill running (read “any hill running”) since, from my understanding, the Richmond Marathon hardly had any hills at all. I didn’t like running hills because they made me tired. I would find out later that that was a big mistake.
Race day was beautiful. We started and I was going at my slow and steady pace. The first 12 miles or so of the course was absolutely gorgeous. It was really incredible. But there were a few hills. They weren’t big hills but they were hills and in hindsight I probably should have taken it very easy on those hills. But I didn’t and by mile 13 I thought I was going to die. I remember thinking at mile 13, “What have I gotten myself into? I still have 13 miles to go.”
Up to that point I had run the entire way. My pattern quickly became, walk a mile and run a mile. Then it became run as far as you can and then walk until you can gain the mental fortitude to run again (I must say that at this point the difference in speed between me running and me walking was not that great - running just meaning that I bounced a little bit.
Holly and Heather had come as well as Heather’s sister Cassidy, her husband Matt, and Trevor and Heather’s friends Matt and Marsha with their four kids. Matt of Matt and Marsha found me at about mile 14 and then everyone else was waiting at mile 17 with some much appreciated oranges.

Here are some pictures of Trevor at mile 17.

Here is me at mile 17. I look much better than I felt.

By mile 20 there was nothing left. I began seeing people with medics on the side of the road with IV tubes and such. My one goal became not to get carried off by the medics. I remember passing the 20 mile marker. The time said “4:48:00” and I thought, “Trevor is probably done. I reeeeeally wish I were done.”
This is a picture of Trevor finishing.

I kept plodding along. I never imagined that I would want to quit as badly as I did.
Mile marker 25 was the best thing that I had ever seen and I decided I was going to run the entire last mile. I just kept pretending that I was forcing Jacob to walk and telling him, “One step more, one step more.”
I made it and it was more relief than anything. My muscles have never felt that kind of pain before. It is the next morning now and I can still very much feel it.
Am I glad I did it? Yes. As Trevor said, the marathon gets better the further you get away from it. I will definitely prepare differently next time.
And by the way, Richmond well deserves the title of Friendliest Marathon. It was extremely well organized and everyone was so nice. Hopefully I will be back next year to make a better showing.
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