Trip started Friday afternoon and
this trip was with my oldest kid. Carlos Garcia. He is 17 years old and is from Spain. He is living with us for the next 6 months
and he has been in the States and with us for 4 months. He is a great kid and he loves to go. So when I asked Carlos if he wanted to go to
Memphis he said “YES!”
So we
loaded up in the New Nissan Versa I bought and hit the road! I-40 felt like I was in the movie CARS with
all 18-wheelers on the interstate! We
stopped at a great burger joint in Russellville to break and the drive!
This would
be my second running of the St. Jude’s Marathon and I remembered the course
being pretty flat and pretty fast. Three
years ago it was like 25 at the start and this year was the opposite. It was very warm, but I wasn’t to worried
because I wasn’t racing. I was doing my
first big marathon pacing and I was a PACER.
And I was a little nervous because I had ran Tulsa 13 days before the
marathon and I had done a 5 hour forest run with Tom 7 days before the
race. So this would be 3 marathons in 3
weeks, and my legs were feeling pretty bad at the end of the run with Tom. But
they were feeling pretty good for the race!
I worked the expo and that got me excited to
pace because so many people were running there first marathon. Also one of the most exciting things was
seeing Donald Trump’s Son at the race because their foundation had donated 20
million dollars to the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital! WOW that is so cool, and topping that off the
Hero’s and other runners had raised 7.6 million dollars!
Ok onto the race again, it was warm start and we were off pretty much dead on pace 7:26 per mile to cross the line under a 3:15! We hit the next 2 miles a were a little ahead of pace but I was not to worried about it. Memphis crowds were awesome! They were so pumped to be outside cheering for the runner. Around mile 3 we came back by the stadium and I was getting the crowd screaming for our pace group. We had a big crew and we were nailing the miles! Jon and I were the 2 pacers for this group and we came in at the half with 40 seconds in the bank and I thought this was great but we didn’t need to hit any more miles any faster or we would start dropping people. And that is what we did at mile 16, they started dropping like flies, and we had hit some wind and hills. But the worst thing was that the temperature was moving up into the 70s and this is not good for marathoning. I have a history of doing terrible in the heat. I started feeling this heat when we turned at mile 20 and we had the wind at our backs. We only had about 2 runners with us at this point and one of them said wow it got 10 degree’s hotter when we turned. I then started feeling worse, so I hit another GU. I probably should have hit 3 or 4 and then started hammering the power aid. Because when I hit mile 23 I told Jon that I was hitting the wall.
I was wrong
it wasn’t the wall , it was a huge brick wall. I handed my pace stick to Steve
the last runner that was with us and told him to stay with Jon and get in under
3:15. I then fell 14 minutes off pace
and I limped in for a 3:29 finish. I
feel 14 minutes off pace in 3 miles! WOW
what a day! Never know how your body is
going to do in a race. I feel like I
helped the runners a lot by telling them to relax, drop their arms. I also told them about fueling and everything
else during the race and had the time of my life running in support of so many
runners! I wish I could have finished on
pace though. It was rough and not as
rough as the next 2 hours after the race because I was throwing up and I
couldn’t keep liquids down.
I was glad I had Carlos there to help me find my way back to
Poteau!
