The marathon is over.  I am running a little late on my report, but I finally have internet access on my laptop!  Praise the Lord.  It’s amazing how crazy I go not having Internet for just two days – especially the day after a marathon that I told everybody about and that I really wanted to report in on!  Right after the marathon we literally came home, took a 30 minute shower and packed and then headed to Zurich where we spent the night last night and there was no internet connection until now.

Race day we woke up bright and early at 7am.  We actually got an extra hour of sleep because the clocks turned back the night before.  That was a nice surprise – we didn’t know about it until that night   I had a protein bar and a banana, along with a cup of coffee and a lot of water.  I wasn’t quite awake:

Then we all piled into the car to head to Lausanne.  S’s mother, father and sister took us – so we were all crammed into the Citroen.  As we drove to Lausanne, it was rainy and miserable.  Here’s what it looked like out the window:

The car ride wasn’t much fun.  I was nervous, squished, cold, and still hadn’t woken up.  Can’t you see the excitement in my face??

We finally got there, parked the car, hit the porta potties, and made it to the starting line.  When we got ready in the morning, S realized that he had forgotten his running socks back in the US.  So he had to wear cotton ones, poor thing.

By the time the start sounded, I was ready to go.  I was freezing in my shorts and short sleeves and wanted to get started.  I think S’s dad has some pictures of before, during, and after the race that I still have to get off his camera, so I will post more later.

I completed the the marathon in 4 hours, 15 minutes.  I ran it all, although some of it much slower than other parts   It was tough, S and I stayed together until 6.5 miles and then he wanted to slow down and I went ahead.  So I pretty much did almost 20 miles on my own, that was really hard.  I’m also used to talking to people in races.  I have found that usually in the US, people want to talk (especially in longer races like marathons) but in this one everybody spoke French.  There was this one woman who I passed who was wearing an Escape to Alcatraz triathlon t-shirt, so I thought “Oooh, maybe she is American!” and I tried to talk to her.  I asked her if she had done that triathlon and tried to explain that was where I was from.  But she didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t understand what I was talking about.  She finally figured it out when I kept pointing to my shirt and saying “Alcatraz” and it turned out it wasn’t even her shirt, she had never even been to the US.  Haha, oh well!  Even the people who were cheering on the side of the road were cheering in french.  It was nice to have people cheering, but I couldn’t understand a single word that they said!

Miles 18-23 were really tough.  It was a more isolated part of the course so there weren’t many people on the sides cheering, and my legs were starting to feel like lead.  It was a very hilly course overall.  S walked most of the second half of the race so he finished in 5 hours 30 minutes.  That’s why we got home so late and had to take a shower and leave again so fast.  The race actually started later than any race I have ever done, too – 10:10am – so that contributed to the mad rush afterwards.

And everything was in kilometers – all the signs and markers.  A marathon is 42 kilometers (vs. 26.2 miles) so it made the distance seem a lot longer to me as I was running it.  I was really glad I was wearing my Garmin so I knew my mileage.  My average time was 9:39 minute miles.  You can see the Garmin output here at this link.  Check out the elevation changes, those were beasts.

Garmin for 2009 Lausanne Marathon

I finished 21st in my age group.  Overall, this race was really fast.  Almost every race I have been in have had people who have walked the whole thing and who are really slow.  But this was a pretty small marathon (There were lots of people there but most of them were for the 1/2 marathon and 10k and 5k) and most people were pretty fast and I think ran the whole thing.  It was impressive.

I am a bit sore – going down stairs isn’t the most fun experience right now – but overall feel good.  S isn’t faring as well, he is limping along like a 90 year old man

Well, that’s all for now.  I will be back later with more pictures and updates.  Thanks for the well wishes, I can’t wait to start running again and working to reduce my time for my next marathon!

G’night, ya’ll.