confucius #76

LA Marathon XX

After one month of official training, I decided to do the LA Marathon. I don' t know exactly where the desire came from and if you asked me two months ago, I would have told you that I was not in the least bit interested in running a marathon ever in my life, let alone so soon. I guess after the half marathon, I started thinking "why not the whole marathon?". And once I started thinking that, it became a matter of proving to myself that I had what it took.

My rough goal was to finish anywhere between 5 hours and 5 1/2 hours. I originally intended to do a run/walk split for the whole marathon, but then at the start gate I met this guy from the army who was running the race with a 45 lb backpack to honor his 45 friends who died in Afganistan. As soon as he told me that, I shook his hand and decided on the spot that I was going to run the whole thing.

Right out of the gate, I realized that this is probably one of the biggest annual events in the city of LA. As you cross the start line, confetti is showering down on you, people are screaming, it's literally like a parade. As you make your way through the first 10 miles, you see people from the neighborhoods standing outside cheering you on. Kids are on the street giving you high fives. There is so much spirit from the community, you feel like you're getting a hero's welcome.

For the first 20 miles, I felt really good. I actually had the ridiculous thought that I could do this thing in 4 hours (I did the first 20 miles in about 3 hr 10 min). Only one month of training for my first marathon and I'm doing it in 4 hours! It was at mile 20 that I realized that it was going to be more challenging than I thought. The mile markers became further and further apart until at mile 23 I hit a wall. It was like my body and mind just gave up! All I could think about was stopping and getting something to eat (incidentally, the last 4 miles run right through Koreatown on Olympic where you can smell the kalbi and bulgolgi as you are running). Finally after about 15 minutes of deflated walking, I decided to jog every other minute. As I made the turn onto Flower and noticed the finish line within sight, I just wanted to get it over with so badly. What was nice about the last stretch was that there were thousands of people lining the street and cheering for that entire half mile. When I finally crossed the finish line, I just felt so relieved to be done, I almost didn't have any energy to celebrate. Official time was 4:43:03. Not bad for my first marathon.

posted by jkung925 @ 11:30 PM