Ohhhhhhhh! you want to hear about the

Well, here goes!

MARATHON MORNING!!

We woke up Marathon morning at 4am to get ready and get down to the shuttle to the start by 4:30am. I put on my trusty spandex, my new singlet:

and my good attitude and headed downstairs. Here's a picture of Kiernan and I trying not to look too nervous on our way out the door:

We met the rest of the team in the lobby and ate our breakfast. In my case, I downed a Snicker's Marathon Energy Bar and the Frusion that my mom and I worked so hard to find the night before. We headed out to the bus just before 5am to head over to Centennial park.

Our arrival at Centennial park, with a full-scale model of the Parthenon as the backdrop, felt more than a little monumental. For those who don't know, Nashville is nicknamed "The Athens of the South," and its cornerstone is the Parthenon. Also for those who don't know, the marathon itself comes from a Greek legend. According to Wikipedia:

The name, "marathon", comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, who was sent from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been miraculously defeated in the Battle of Marathon. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping, but moments after proclaiming his message to the city he collapsed dead from exhaustion.

Like Pheidippides himself, we were about to embark on quite a monumental journey (well, and hopefully not die in the process!).

We spend about 60 nervous minutes drinking water, visiting the porta potties, and making our way to the start line. And without further ado...

THE RACE - MILES 1-10!!!

The race started at 7:00am with a wave start. This means that the participants were broken up into corrals, which were released approximately every 90 seconds following the start of the race. We were in corral five, so after about 7 minutes, it was our turn to go!!

Kiernan, Matt, Erica and I were all in the same corral, but Erica and I planned to stick together while Matt and Kiernan started off slightly faster than us. Our goal pace for the first 8-14 miles was 9 minutes 20 seconds. Our first mile ended up being a far too fast, at 8 minutes 45 seconds, so we slowed down to make sure we saved our energy for later in the race. The temperature at the start line was about 54 degrees with full cloud cover. The first few miles were really comfortable for running.

We saw Erica's parents at mile one and my mom and Taylor at the water stop at mile 1.7. We continued up music row and down past Belmost University, attempting to keep a moderate pace through much of the early part of the course. I say "attempting" because it's always tempting in a race to begin much faster than you should and then you simply lose all energy later in the race. We did a pretty good job and managed to keep our miles between 9 and 9:20 for the first hour and a half.

Around mile 6, I became aware that the sun was out and it was beginning to warm up, but as it was only 8am, it didn't seem to bad at the time. We enjoyed about two miles of downhill after that and then began to look forward to seeing Erica's parents any my mom and Taylor again at mile 10. Here we are:

And now I must start a new post...because I seem to be running out of space!!!

Click here to continue to miles 10-19