So Now What?

International breakfast welcome run

Wow! What a year it has been. I am still pinching myself. Did I just run a full marathon? In Ireland? Yes indeed I did. All 42.2 km of it. What a beautiful city Dublin is. What is more beautiful is the people I met along the way. A hundred thousand welcomes. I could go on and on in detail about every inch of the run and how I felt but I will just share the parts that were the most moving.
Standing in the third wave waiting to go, I felt incredibly proud to be there. I felt welcomed and grateful, oh...and full of delicious Irish food and spirit! I was ready to run.

Along the way I thought of all the wonderful places we had been and how for the first time in a long, long time, our family was truly experiencing the priceless gift of in the moment living.

Pushing through, and moving on :)

I struggled quite a bit between 21k and 30k or so. I can't explain why. Maybe I had too many Irish breakfasts the previous week, or maybe I was just letting my mind convince my body that this was hard.
Whatever it was I managed to push through.

When I came around the last 3k, I knew I had done it. I knew I could finish. That is when the street got narrow and the fans were close and all I could hear was that I was "brilliant" in a beautiful Irish accent. Well I started to cry, but I quickly realized that crying sucked up way too much energy and so I managed to hold my tears until I crossed the finish line.

Now I want to do it all again!

I followed very good advice from trainer Stephen to rest for two weeks and I have done that quite well.  I didn't exercise for 4 days after. Then we came back home so I started walking the dog for about a week before I began cross training with yoga. Okay , sure I cheated with some burpees and screamers in a 20 minute HIIT training session, but I did that only a couple of days ago, and it felt awesome.

I went with Barry today for our first post marathon run, and we ran with no gadgets. I felt so free of a schedule. No worries on pace or structure or distance...just run....ahhhhh.

Barry, Stephen & Karen -Proud Finishers!

BUT...that can't last forever. I am addicted to exercise and need to have a goal so I am working on that and will share in the near future.