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I have two firsts, if that makes sense. When I was 13, I went to Fairbanks, Alaska and walked the Equinox marathon. This was something my mother always wanted to do, so we made it into a family vacation. (Does that say something about my family?) I hiked with my sister (older). It took us about 7-8 hours to finish the race, and it was snowing the whole time. Snowing, icy and really really cold. The best part was when Mom, who finished before us, came back with a thermos of steaming hot chocolate. Yum. So that was my real first marathon.
My second was my first road marathon, and believe me, roads and trails are different beasts. I went to the WDW marathon in 1999, with the idea that I would qualify for Boston. I set my sights low - 3:30. Well, it was a muggy, cool day for Disney that year and I ran the first half a little too fast. I was trying the Runner's world pacing teams and the leader's stratagy was run hard, then walk for a few seconds. I hadn't trained that way and soon after the half let the pacing team go. I bumbled around the parks for a few more miles, then decided that I really needed to start running again.I finished the race in 3:39:55, so yeah, I did qualify for Boston. THe thing that I remember about that race, besides the cones marking the course, was the finish and how poorly it was set up. Mom and I had made a silly mistake. I was planning on running faster then she was, but she kept the key to the rental car. Oops. Shortly after I finished, it started to get really cold and really nasty. There was no where to wait that wasn't exposed to the wind and all the family members of the runners still on the course were crowded into the tiny tents at the meeting area. I ended up going to the medical tent to get out of the wind and to warm up.
So those are my firsts. One road, one trail.
RNR girl
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