Not Always a Happy Ending...

So this is not the post that I ever dreamed it would be. While a marathon is always tortuously hard, I seem to always find a way to finish it. But this time my experience was totally different. In summary, I didn't get to finish the race.

Rachel Zackrison, Amber Earnest, Me, and Ken Fitzgerald (Rachel's friend)

Here we all are at the beginning of the race full of our nervous anticipation and excitement. You train and train and train, but it all comes down to that day and your body on that day. Anyway, I started running and was feeling great. But right as I got to mile 7 I felt a distinct shooting pain right on the outside of both of my knees. I was shocked to feel it, since I hadn't had any knee problems during my training. I have had knee problems in the past, but none recently. At this point I figured I could just drink and eat something and run through the pain. So I started into the four miles of uphill and realized close to mile 10 that the pain was getting worse. I took some Excedrin thinking that I could probably make it if I could just dull the pain a bit. And by the half-way point I really thought I was going to finish. But it's also at mile 13 that the race becomes a very steep downhill course. And my knees were sadly not up to that.

My parents ended up making it to St. George the night before the race. We had discussed where they would be so that we could find each other. We had planned on them being at mile 21. So as my pain worsened and as the pain pills were not working, in my mind I just kept thinking that I would make it to mile 21 and call it quits. So it was definitely tragic at mile 21 to realize that we were still way too far up in the canyon and that no spectators could reach us by car yet. This forced me to run on. But finally at mile 22 I found a first aid van parked on the side of the road. I walked right over to it, opened the door and said, "What do you do if you are trying to quit?". She kind of laughed at me, but then realized that I wasn't laughing at all. Anyway, I climbed in, they took me down another mile or so to a point where I could find my parents. Once I found them, I was able to have a good cry, and then be eternally grateful that they were there to stand with me on the sidelines as we watched and cheered for all the rest of our runners to finish the race.

Here I am moments after finding my parents, realizing that the race was over for me.

Here is the big board with all the names written on it of the people who scratched. I'm there, #5205.

My sister-in-law Amber had a huge surprise waiting for her at mile 24. Her parents were there, having arrived all the way from Mesa, and she didn't have a clue that they had come. I was so glad to be able to watch that reunion.

Rachel only seconds away from her triumphant finish! She had a fabulous race (minus the puking of course!)

Thank you so much mom and dad!! How would I have handled this one without you guys? What a beautiful miracle that you ended up being there that day!! I love you guys.

And despite it not ending the way I had hoped and trained, it was still wonderfully fun. We still did lots of good laughing, lots of good limping and hobbling around St. George after the race. And of course consumed an enormous amount of delicious food. One outstanding reason to run races in Utah?!...Cafe Rio as a post-race lunch.

Not the happy ending I was hoping for, but then again, I kind of hate happy endings in movies. I will use this as my motivation to get better, train again and race hard again. I love running.