On Saturday, after not near enough training, at 5:30 in the morning we awoke to embark on an adventure of...pain! ;) Actually it turned out to not be so bad. We drove to the Deck, took a bus up to Two Harbors and waited for our waves to start our 26.2 mile trek. Arlie's sister Amie and brother-in-law Joe were also doing the marathon. They started in the wave before us, 3 minutes before our wave. We had to catch up to them right from the start so we could all skate together. We caught them and skated with them for most of the marathon. For lots of the miles, we drafted which was great! The last 10 miles or so they took off and we stayed at our "slower" pace! :) My knees finally got warmed up and stopped hurting at about mile 5 which was great. Arlie's lower back started to bother him not too far into the race. By mile 16, I could feel my feet getting blisters around all my ankle bones. Every time I'd put down my skate, it would feel like little knives poking at my foot. I didn't want to stop and chance having my legs freeze up, so we carried on. Right about mile 20, we really had to motivate ourselves to keep going. We were both pretty tired, but after going that far we didn't want to give up! It was an absolutely perfect day for blading. Not too hot, not too cold! There was hardly any wind. We got to watch Lake Superior as we skated. It was fun to people watch as well. It made the miles go fast. (However, we did notice the farther we went, the longer the miles felt:) ). There was also people along the whole thing cheering you on! Arlie and I crossed the finish line together (we talked about if we wanted to race across or go together and we opted for the second) feeling very accomplished! Surprisingly, after sitting for about 2 minutes and taking off our blades, we didn't feel too bad. In fact, besides my knees, my legs weren't really that tired or sore. I had a wedding that I went to photograph after the marathon, the only thing that hurt was bending down ;) Sunday we both felt fine and went for a nice hike in the woods! I'm not sure if I'll do the marathon again...but it was great to do and see if I could finish it!
Stretching before the marathon
Getting ready
Trying to figure out what to wear so we weren't to hot, but were warm enough
We didn't realize we matched until we saw this picture. It wasn't planned :)
At the starting line...wave 8
Skating with a view of the lake
Going over the starting line for the half marathon...only 13.2 miles left!
Just crossed the finish line! We did it!
Our finisher shirts...it's proof we finished!
1 comment:
Congratulations! I actually almost got teary because I'm so impressed and proud that you finished together! Way to go!
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