Marathons are the biggest, and probably only, reason I’m worried about this challenge. The day after, shit, the 2-3 days after a race, one doesn’t really feel like working out. Granted, walks and/or swims are good to help relieve the soreness, but lets face it, when you’ve done a marathon you’ve earned the right to be lazy! So, I won’t even address the stupid notions I have about doing some ultra marathons this year. That should be fun. Not really.

Day 13: Marathon. (Sunday) Mobile, AL “First Light Marathon”
Official distance 26.2mi. Garmin distance: farther than that.
Time: 5:54:01, pace: 13:31

The course was beautiful, through “historic Mobile”, then out through two Colleges, then back to downtown. It was mostly flat for about 5 miles, then the hills started about mile 10-22, rolling.
Funny thing about that jacked up car up there ^^. A guy was running near me as we were crossing that intersection. Cops were holding & directing traffic. He calls out to them “Tell me I’m hallucinating! Tell me that that isn’t a car taller than the trucks!” It was quite hilarious at mile 23. You’re laughing, right? Ok, we were delirious. Whatever.

I was trying something TOTALLY NEW during this race. I like to buck trends (and by “trends” I mean, solid advice & rules by experienced racers) and try completely new nutrition during the race. Without practicing during training (wait, what’s training?), I made tons of homemade ‘energy bars’ and carried them in my ultra racing pack. In my other races, my stomach usually stop tolerating sweet sports drink (Gatorade, Powerade: YUCK!) and gels/shot blocs after about mile 16ish. I just can’t tolerate them anymore. So, I think that since my eating over the past year has been dramatically cleaned up, that I can start cleaning up my race food. While some think it’s stupid to not use these sugar and chemical laden “foods” during a race, many people rely on real foods. Also, these products have only been around for about 30-40 years. Long distance racing has been around for much longer than that. Anyway…that’s enough of my soapbox. It’s an experiment and I’m going to keep tweaking.

Since I’m new to this blogging thing, I’ll say my finish time was…less than stellar. It’s not my worst race by any means, but it is definitely out of my normal 4:30-5:15 finish times. I believe it was a combination of the food, the very hot-for-winter temps (70 at the start, 100% humidity…UGH) and my stupid lack of salt mistake. Yep. In all my bars and carried food, I forgot to salt them during cooking and didn’t carry salt packets or pills. Lovely. (not really)

It was an experiment, but I wouldn’t say I failed miserably. I learned, or was reminded, that no matter how many of these things I do, I can’t get lazy and forget little things like salt! That said, I got a new state and finished my #22 marathon! Until next week…where I try for #23. With salt.