Dude you were exactly right! I finished the first half in less then two hours and was feeling great but all of a sudden my left calf cramped up bad. That was just the beginning. Then my right one started to cramp up and then it was both at the same time. But like you said I ate bananas, oranges along the way and I don't know but the pain would go away momentarily. The last 6-8 miles were really hard because of it and it started to affect me mentally. Thankfully there were pretty girls running too and it would give me a spark to push myself and keep up with them until the cramping flared up again and had to stop and stretch. I finished in 5 hours, and I want to do it again next year with what I have learned from here and other people I talked to along the way. I'm wearing the medal proudly! DonnyMost that's great! But when I first read your post I thought you were talking about finishing the whole marathon and it got me real dissapointed in myself. Still a great accomplishment.
Hold your head up high...FINISHING in itself is a helluva accomplishment. I ran my first marathon last year and everything was great until Memorial Park... I did the half today (first time to do that) and I can tell you it was a blast..without the total agony of the full marathon.
1:27:01 for the half. PR'd by 2 and a half minutes. 4th in my age group. What a great day! I was thrilled! Congrats to everyone who ran - you are all winners! :grin:
I don't know about the rest of you runners... but Mondays are always my high intensity lifting days for my legs and calf days... squats, calf raises, romanian deadlifts, regular deadlifts, et al Not today. If I did any of my max squats today, I fear my kneecaps might shatter. Gonna have to do my Tuesday chest and tris workout instead...
Great time! Congrats to all the finishers! Ran with my mom and brother, finished at 5:28.23 for the full. I haven't done the Houston Marathon in a long time so I'm not sure when they changed it, but I really enjoyed the new course. Also got to shake hands with Bush Sr. at mile 19 which was really cool. Great support along the way and I really like the Under Armor finisher's shirt.
My mom (running in her 7th marathon in her 50s) also saw Bush 41 and shook hands with him. Then she stopped running to ask if anyone had a camera so she could get a picture snapped with him. When I heard this story I was like, "Mom - you were in the middle of a marathon! WTF?" She didn't care - she really wanted a pic with the president. Unfortunately no one had a camera so she sadly started running again.
Congrats bud. Did you run it according to your initial plan? Or did you have to stop more times than expected?
I wanted to run in the LIVESTRONG marathon out here in Austin, but they won't let you run if you don't have health insurance.
wth? Normally, people who run marathon's aren't even in need of any health insurance. Marathon runners are some of the healthiest people I know.
