You Still Here?!

You may have been wondering where the hell I've been over the past week. I've been in a funk. Work takes my time and energy, my dog tore his achilles tendon, so I'm spending a lot of time tending to the injured (but curiously, happy) canine, and E. and I have been sniping at each other recently. Or rather, there's been some long silences between us.

You know. Normal stuff.

Plus, I feel no one reads this anyway, so why bother finishing my marathon debriefing? I know, I know, if I post more regularly, readers would be more likely to head on over this way. I just feel like recently, blogging takes up a lot of time for little reward. I haven't even read my emails or comments re this blog for the past 7 days. Not that I don't love you commenting and emailing. I do.

As far as running, I was gung-ho last week, the immediate week after the marathon. I think perhaps I ran too much - four times, between 4-6 miles each. This week, I've been in a rebellious mood, and although I've exercised three times this week so far (and will take a weight-lifting class this afternoon), I've only run twice.

Here's the end of my race report: P. rejoined me somewhere between miles 21 and 22. He kept up a constant chatter, and I grunted in reply every once in awhile. Mile 23 was the last Gatorade/water station. Approaching the aid station from about 50 yards away, an ambulance raced by on a street perpendicular to the marathon course.

It turned out that someone driving an old Mercedes lost control of the vehicle and plowed into a lightpost close to 40 miles per hour. The car - with the person still stuck inside - was smoking as we passed by, its front end crumpled and windshield broken. Yikes.

E. was at Mile 23 with a digital videocamera. He zoomed in on me. "How're you feeling?" he asked.

"I feel like hell!" I said in reply. But I smiled. I was glad to be almost done with the race. I took my last few sips of Gatorade and kept running.

At Mile 24, I saw RFK Stadium and the Capitol dead ahead of us. A beautiful sight. No one was talking at this point around us except P. We were a sorry sight.

At Mile 25, we headed into a tunnel, and as we emerged into the sunlight, a man on a bike was urging us on. He was telling us to smile, to keep running, and tried to get a woman near me to stop walking and start running. He was well-meaning, but irritating. We tried to ignore him the best we could.

"I'm going to punch him," I said to no one in particular and tried to run towards him. But my legs rebelled. I felt as if I was running on two dead logs. Forget it, I was too tired.

The woman finally began a painful trot to the finish just to get him to be quiet.

I could see the red, white and blue balloon arch at the finish line ahead. At mile 26, I turned right. Less than a quarter-mile to go. P. was talking a blue streak and told me to run as fast as I could. The noise filled my head.

As he turned off, I yelled at him, "SHUT UP!"

Then I high-tailed it to the finish. I willed my legs to turn over as fast as they could. I thought I was running smoothly, but when I saw the video of me later, I was running with a hitch in my stride.

That's because my right knee was throbbing painfully, and bolts of pain shot through my right leg every time my foot touched the ground.

Afterwards, I went to the medical tent to get some ice for my knee. The medics insisted on pulling up my tights, even though I said it was no big deal, that I'd just bruised it.

That's when we saw the 2-3 gashes on my knee. "I thought it was more than just a bruise," said the doctor with satisfaction.

Final net time: 4:15:48.