Wallace Family

I recently set a new personal best for running a marathon.  I competed in the second annual Rock N' Roll marathon, a marathon that took place entirely within the limits of the District of Columbia.  This was a really cool race to compete in.  All the streets that we ran in had been blocked off and it was tons of fun to run up and down many major and lots of small streets of our nation's capital.  The course took the runners around many of the famous D.C. landmarks and even one I had heard of but never seen before: the Titanic memorial.  I probably couldn't tell you where that memorial is, but I know we ran by it!  A lot of the course was along streets that faced the U.S. Capital Building.  We seemed to run up to it, make some turns, and then run towards it from another direction for much of the race.  I can't think of a cooler backdrop for a marathon.

I am really happy with my race results.  I set a new personal record, shaving 8 minutes off my previous best and finishing in 3:40:19.  My main goal was to finish under 3 hours and 40 minutes, so it was slightly disappointing to miss that goal by 20 seconds.  I had to stop at a porta-potty for an emergency bathroom break, so if I could have figured out how to get my stomach issues under control for this race my finish time for sure would have been under 3:40.  Furthermore, according to my GPS watch, I actually hit the 26.2 mile mark at 3:37.  When I crossed the finish line, according to my GPS, I had actually run 26.5 miles.  I think this is due to a lot of little things like passing groups of people by running around them instead of just staying in a straight line and hugging the corners in the turns.  In the future, I will keep this in mind.  I will also try to save a few seconds here and there whenever possible to compensate for the things I do to add a few seconds.  Over the course of 26.2 miles, evidently it all adds up and really does matter for your finishing time.  This brings new meaning to what I have heard people say many times: "You prepare for and plan for the 26 miles, but the 0.2 miles at the end gets you every time" (or something like that). 

It is still hard to fathom that in a race that lasts hours and is over 26 miles long, whether or not you reach your goal still comes down to the smallest of things.  In my case, if I didn't have to make an emergency bathroom stop, if I would have spent 30 seconds less in the portapotty, if I had an average mile pace of one second faster, or if I just didn't add an extra 0.3 miles to my running distance, I would have easily finished under 3:40.  I am not bothered by this though because I know I actually did run 26.2 miles in under 3:40, and even more importantly, I know I will shatter the 3:40 mark in my next marathon.

I am most happy with the results of my race though because I was able to push myself hard and go all out without any injuries hampering my performance.  Unfortunately, my training leading up to this marathon was adversely affected by various injuries that set my training back a few days here and there or even a full week at one point.  I did manage to get my 'long run' in about a week and a half before the race and I was able to be injury-free on race day.  This was what was most important to me.  I felt that if I was injury-free on race day I would be able to push myself as hard as I could and go all out, which is what I wanted to be able to do. 

Here are some fun things we have done with Mason lately:

We finally had some warm weather the other day so we walked to the park near our house. Mason is still learning about parks. He was a little scared on the teeter totter. He's not sure what to think about slides. He liked the swings after a minute though and of course his favorite part was eating sticks and dirt. We tried to limit that as much as possible, but I think he still got a lot. 

I taught Mason to bang the sticks together instead of eat them. This worked for a little bit.

It looks like Mason is saying - "Mom is it ok if I climb up this?"

We have also been waiting for the weather to warm up so we could get a bike trailer and take Mason for bike rides. We got a trailer this week and went on our first bike ride today. We all really enjoyed it! It will be such a great way to get exercise and have fun with mason at the same time.

We got out our rock band stuff for Mason to play with. He loved it!