I DID IT !!!!

5:30am : alarm - breakfast (peanut butter toast with banana and glass of milk)
6:00am : outta here (I stopped at Tim Hortons for a small coffee. NEED my caffeine)
7:05 am : Arrive on marathon site
8:50 am : Start walking a bit to warm up
9:00 am : START !!!
I was at the end of the pack/hurd/peleton, here is a picture.

Route was verrrry hilly. Ouch.  Water and gatorade glasses were being given every uhm 3-4 km by vonlunteer workers, who also cheered us on. Last ... 2 km were VERY difficult.  I was exhausted. But I had read about that last stretch.

BUT I DID IT. I reached my goal. I RAN the whole thing. Uphill, downhill, you name it. I fucking RAN it baby !!.  First 2km I felt rusty, was debating whether I should stop like 30 sec to relax a bit, but I thought My goal is none other than do it without walking. So DO it and see what happens.

Well what happened is that I did it in about 1:15. (Official time : 1:15:24.3) (note : Time on monitor on the below picture says 1:18, but I was at the end of the hurd when we started so it did take me about 3 min walking to get to cross the starting line) Not a SUPER time, but I don't care.  This is a picture of me approaching the finish line. Ad & Ian were cheering me on in the crowd. At this point I was very emotional, seeing them just was sooo intense. The last 500m I gave it ALL I had, I felt like I was sprinting. LOL. Look at me on the picture, I'm not sprinting at ALL.  Ad told me that I looked very tired.

Some pictures after the race :

A lady offered to take a family picture.  I love my 2 guys, they were so proud of me.

Relaxing on marathon site after the race

This is what was waiting for me at home :-)

"The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start." John Bingham