The marathon finally happened

And it was a bit of a let down! The hubby and I started out really well. It's crowded in the beginning so I was running with him even though he is a much faster runner. I did struggle a little to keep up and around mile 4 I told him that he should go on and run his own race (and let me relax and rest a bit!)

Being the sweetheart that he is, he wanted to run with me a little longer even though I was running painfully slow for him. About the time I really thought I wasn't going to be able to keep up, disaster struck! Only at first it didn't seem too much like disaster.

The hubby was running along through the Heights and it was still quite crowded. Between that and the fact that there is so much to pay attention to, he didn't happen to notice the road humps that we were running over. He didn't even notice the first one at all... however the second one was not missed so easily. Unfortunately for him rather than running over the road hump, he slammed his foot straight into it.

This caught him off guard and pushed him backwards a little. He mentioned to me at the time (this was before mile 6) that he had hit that road hump wrong but then didn't mention it much after that. The hubby was still punishing me a bit with his pace. But then he started noticing some discomfort I believe before the halfway point.

Being the stubborn boy that he is, he kept running on through the discomfort until he hit about 16 miles. At this point, the hubby realizes that there is a problem and he still has 10 miles to go. Everyone will agree that this is quite a mountain to overcome but he is still a stubborn boy!

We continued on with him walking more and myself doing a sad little jog since it seemed a little less painful than walking did. We stayed together through to the end. About 4 miles from the end (22 miles) he pretty much gave up on running at all but I was still doing my sad jogging thing.

Pretty soon after that downtown loomed. I've run the Houston marathon twice before this and everytime I get to this point I'm pretty much overjoyed. Well as overjoyed as you can be when every muscle from your neck to your toes hurts. I think Mark was feeling the same.

At the point of entering downtown, there is about 1.5 miles or less to go. The hubby is now struggling to even walk on this leg that has been injured but still he perseveres. He limps his way to the end and at the last tenth of a mile, he runs again and crosses the finish line running.

We finished in about 5 hours and 45 minutes. This is over an hour slower than my fastest marathon. While I never dreamed I would even come close to my fastest time, I figured I would finish just over the 5 hour mark and that the hubby would completely blow my best time out of the water. What a surprise it was that I was not the one slowing us down!

Despite the time, I am really proud of the hubby. I'm pretty sure no one else I know would have finished after hurting themselves so early. He is a fighter and that is part of what I love about him!

He informed me that he was definitely going to run another marathon (to prove a point I'm sure!) And then he stated that we were running SunMart again 'cause that was way more fun. I knew he was trying to kill me!