I ran my first marathon with my friend Jack. Then we stopped at IHOP and we ate a little bit. Then I ran a marathon back.
The first marathon started off around an 8:30 pace because Jack's a speed demon. I started struggling, especially around the half-marathon mark.
He rolled his ankle as he was getting in to the IHOP ahead of me, so he told me that he wouldn't be able to finish.
We had actually talked about this ahead of time and I realized that I had committed to finishing the race no matter what.
His roommate had come to the IHOP with supplies for us, so we were able to use a muscle gun and reload on gels and carbs, but eventually I turned back to run.
As I was running, I thought about very few things. In fact, my thoughts were mostly some amount of '1 2 3 4' as I fought to keep my feet going. Unironically every step hurt.
As time passed, though, I kept getting clsoer and before I knew it, I was done. I ended up being around 4 hours on the first and 5 hours on the second. It was just a little under 9 hours of moving time. It was 11:10 hours from start to finish, which came from the stop at IHOP, a break 75% of the way through and also the buildup of many pauses for checking maps to see if I was going the right way.
I was hoping I would have more insights or thoughts, but I mostly have a few silly videos from Jack on the first half and the knowledge that I could do the second half on my own.
So maybe later, I'll think back and remind myself that I can do hard things :).
