Prague Marathon

I have friends that are amazing athletes and they convince me to do dumb things like run a marathon. So despite not having "run a marathon" on my bucket list, I ended up in Prague w/a group of friends and ran 26.2 miles. Luckily, I had a great group of friends to train with...doing long runs with friends makes the miles go by easier. I won't lie, there was a lot of training hours that went into preparing for this race. As the weather warmed up in Saudi, we woke up earlier to train (I think at one point we had to start our long runs at 3:00 am- yuck)!

Before the race we got to do some sightseeing. Prague is such a beautiful city and the weather couldn't have been more perfect that weekend (1st weekend in May).

Just before the race began. My friend, Angie, is a race junkie- she gets all excited about racing and the adrenaline rush/high it gives her. Not me though, I was hoping to not have to use the toilet again at this point.

Mid-race...Brian was able to track my progress on the RunCzech app and plan ahead so that he could see us run by a couple of times. I'm smiling but I also remembering shouting out to him "this sucks" or something of that nature. Truthfully, I felt really good up to about mile 22- my legs started cramping and I had to slow down to a walk until the cramping would go away. Then I could run for a bit until the cramping started again. I basically had to run/walk the last few miles. Other than that, it was a great race. I'm positive that was the most calories I've ever burned in a single day! I remember being hungry for the next 2 weeks straight. And yes, I ate whatever I wanted to!

All done...just waiting on another friend to cross the finish line. We all finished in about 30 min intervals...every 1/2 hr someone else from our group crossed the finish line.

Group photo of everyone that raced.

A chocolate cafe?! YES PLEASE! I just ran a freaking marathon and I can eat whatever I want!

I know you're wondering if I'll do another marathon someday. I don't know. It's a lot of training hours away from family (hence why I wake up so early and try to train while they're still asleep) and it's tough on the body. 2 weeks after the race I hurt my knee on a "short" 12 mile run and it's still not completely healed. (MRI shows partially torn PCL and bursitis on my inner knee.) I think half marathons are about as long as I should go for now.