My life may be falling apart… but I did just run a marathon 2 weeks ago!

With two weeks ago from today marking the completion of my fourth marathon, it was only 1 week ago from today that I asked a friend of mine to shove her fingers down my throat so I could regurgitate the various assortments of alcohol that was swirling around my stomach. Ha!

To divert your attention back to the marathon lets go over some metrics:

• 46112 yards
• 138336 feet
• 1660038 inches
• 4216497 centimeters

Whatever form of the metric system you choose, it is all going to equal 26.2 miles. I am sure you have met someone in your life who has ran a marathon because let me give you a little insight into the mind of a marathoner, marathon runners LOVE talking about marathons.

I swear it’s not just me. Just check out all the 13.1 or 26.2 stickers on the back of people’s cars. But marathon runners should talk about it because they deserve it! That shit is hard!

You spend about 3-6 months putting in the time, miles, energy and money just to accomplish a task that the first person who ever attempted died. Yeah you heard me, the first guy to ever run a marathon D.I.E.D.

Legend states that Pheidippides was a Greek messenger that was sent from Marathon to Athens to deliver a message to the Greeks about their defeat over the Persians. Pheidippides ran the entire distance without stopping and once he arrived to Athens to bring the good news, he dropped dead.

Poor man didn’t even get a medal or brag about his accomplishment on Facebook!

This ambitious journey of marathon running started because I just felt like it my senior year of high school. My friend Amberly Gil and I didn’t really train for it; we just showed up at the starting line at Dodger Stadium and went for it.

I mean, who does that and who keeps doing that? Well, I do ladies and gentlemen!

I really don’t have a good reason for why I run marathons. I don’t have this extreme weight loss journey and I’m not raising thousands of dollars for charity nor do I have some inspirational background story that will ever appear on Good Morning America.

It’s one of the few things in life that I’m good at and I simply like doing it. I enjoy the challenge and knowing that I have what it takes to overcome any obstacle that might come my way. However as with all things in life, there were some ups and downs.

I would love to say that I woke up every morning at the crack of dawn to fit in a good run, ate healthy and stuck to my training plan…. but that is SO far from the case.

I was starting at ground/below zero for this race. The most physical activity I got senior year was walking to the bar and running home from the bar.

For all my Gonzaga friends you know how sketchy Spokane is at night which exactly why I said, “run” not “walk”

When forming my training plan I had this excellent vision in my mind that I would go to bed around 8:30 PM and wake up at 5:00 AM every morning to fit in a nice solid run and then have the rest of the day ahead of me! Great idea, Erin! That’s fantastic!!!

Ha…Ha…Ha

Each morning my alarm clock went off my eyes sprang open and my mind went, “fuuuuuuuuuck!”

I’m not going out there! It’s dark and there could be murderers out in the streets!

And I am running a marathon just to lose weight so society can tell me I look good? Screw that!!!!

I don’t need the marathon why don’t I just try that Whole 30 thing all my friends are posting about on Facebook? Or just scratch the plan all together why don’t I buy a 30 rack of beer instead?

Alas, despite all the doubts that ran across my mind I dropped $150 on this race and there was no refund policy for lazy people so I figured I might as well stick with it.

Training began to pick up as the college weight began to fall off. But as they do say, “old habits die hard.”

I went back to Gonzaga University for Alumni Weekend at the beginning of October and drank my brains out and ended up with a really bad sinus infection and bronchitis for 4 weeks.

That really put a damper on my marathon training.

But as we all know, shit happens. I came to the conclusion that it is what it is and there is a marathon that needs to be run.

Has anyone else ever said that before?

Why exactly did I decide to run this marathon you might ask? To answer your question, it was to force myself to lose a little bit of weight.

Over the course of the past 5 years I have ran 4 marathons.

Over the course of the past 4 years I lived off a diet that consisted mostly of cheap alcohol, pizza, Jimmy Johns and canned soup.

My body type also serves absolutely zero benefit to that of a distance runner. I look more or less like a cropped photo of a distance runner that was squished down to fit the frame.

E.G. me pictured at mile 24 at the 2015 San Francisco Marathon.

 

Nevertheless this has formed into my favorite hobby (if you can even call this madness a hobby). Each marathon I have completed is unique and different, as they have been accomplished at different stages of my life.

This past race I was coming off of the heaviest I have ever been.

I am not kidding when I say I gained my entire freshman 15 during my last semester of college.

During the last month of college I was lying on the floor when I snapped a selfie of myself. A few months earlier I noticed I had gained weight in my face (it’s the first place I gain weight) but I had no idea it was this bad.

When I looked into the screen, I realized that my face was almost directly proportional to my swollen face after I had my wisdom teeth removed. NOT NORMAL/HEALTHY!!!

           

My face had gotten so large not because of surgery, but because I literally ate and drank whatever I wanted whenever I wanted for the better half of senior year.

But I would attribute part of the weight gain to the fact that my house and McDonald’s shared a parking lot.

With the closeness in proximity to my house, that meant one of two things for me everyday:

1. Good day= chocolate dipped cone
2. Bad day= chocolate dipped cone AND fries

Despite not putting in as much miles and training as I did in my previous races, I have no idea how I managed to pull off a time of 3:41:03 (8:26 pace/mile). Although I was aiming to qualify for the Boston Marathon (3:35:00), I knew that I did not put in the time and effort.

All I wanted to do in this race was PR and not injure myself like I did a week before my 21^st birthday when I ran a half marathon extremely hungover with no training and ended up on crutches for 2 months.

The race began with the bus picking me up at 4:45 AM from my hotel to drop me off at the starting line.

I received a snapchat around 5:00 AM and decided to Facetime one of my friends (Julia Rogers) who was still up from the night before.

“You will have completed a marathon before the time I am even awake!” Julia explained.

I could tell the people around me on the bus were getting annoyed so I ended the call. The bus dropped us off at the top of the San Gabriel Mountains around 6:30 AM. It was still pitch black outside and I stood shivering among the other hundreds of psychos waiting for the race to start at 7:00 AM.

As the time grew near we all huddled toward the starting line and the race began!

Now it’s hard to fill in the gaps because I am not kidding when I say I blacked out for the majority of the race. I truly don’t remember a large chunk of it and I could not begin to tell you why.

My first blackout that didn’t involve alcohol, HOLLA! 

I blacked back in around mile 18 when the uphills began. Gah-lee that was tough! Who in the right mind puts steep rolling hills for the last 6 miles of a marathon? Feeling weak and tired I Facetimed my friends who were waiting for me at the finish line.

Seeing their faces and hearing their laughs I knew this was almost over.

Heading up a steep hill around mile 23 I began to slow and my form probably resembled that of a gorilla. I heard a spunky little lady behind me shout, “Keep moving that behind of yours, sister! I know Boston is out of the picture but the finish line isn’t!”

Those were my thoughts exactly. This random stranger helped put into perspective that just because I didn’t accomplish my goal exactly the way I wanted doesn’t mean that I get to give up and not finish what I started.

I straightened my shoulders and picked my head up. My legs kicked into high gear and I fucking owned those last 3.2 miles!

It’s a unique feeling when your mind takes complete control of your body. Although I couldn’t feel my legs for the last few miles, it’s quite amazing how your spirit and determination to succeed can operate independently of reason.

While the marathon is the same distance each time, what I take great pride in for this accomplishment is that I keep going the distance.

I will gladly sit in my piss covered shorts and not walk for weeks on end to just say that yes, I did something hard…something really fricking hard and I am a better person because of it.

Because while I may not know what I want to do with the rest of my life or if I am making the right decision pretty much ever, I know that there are certain challenges that I am able to overcome with the proper mindset, attitude and sense of humor.

Once you think about, life is pretty much just a series of mini marathons and we are all struggling to hit the finish line.

Would I ever encourage someone to run a marathon? Absolutely!

There’s nothing a good ole marathon can’t fix in your screwed up life!

 

Cheers,

Erin

 

P.S. Here is a picture of me in my latest marathon. Why yes, my shirt does say “Impeach Trump” on it.