Piece of cake?

Tonight my youngest son, Bailey, walked into our "Hoosier room" (our extra bedroom where my treadmill currently lives), and saw me standing on the treadmill.  He tends to be the hardest on me of my four boys as far as personal trainers go, and he greeted me with, "Seriously?  You haven't even STARTED yet?" (Admittedly, I do tend to have a little problem where I get all ready to run with my laptop secured to my treadmill, but before I click on hulu & actually start running, I get very distracted by FB, Twitter, blogs, online shopping, etc....) :) Anyway, after he came a little closer and saw the sweaty proof that I actually had finished my run he said, "Good job mom. That was fast."

My marathon training schedule required me to log 3 miles tonight, and tomorrow is a rest day.  It's times like this when I think, you know, this marathon stuff truly has become a piece of cake!  However,  then I remember what's coming after Thursday.  6 miles on Friday followed by 11 on Saturday will have me once again questioning why the heck I signed up for marathon #4.  Believe it or not, I almost always seem to have a good answer to this question though, and it made me think back to each of the three marathons that I have completed.

I chose Disney to run my 1st 26.2 because I figured if I didn't survive, at least I would have died in the happiest place on earth!  We planned a trip for all 6 of us to travel to Orlando in January 2011.  I trained, I ran, I survived, and I was even impressed by my 4:33 time, but I swore it was a one time deal!  I was in tears for the last 3 miles, but I knew my family, and Mickey, were waiting for at the finish line.  (I was NOT going to disappoint Mickey!)  Afterwards I can't even describe what my legs felt like.  After an ice bath, and time in the hot tub, I finally texted my son's girlfriend who run's cross country, desperate for advice. She told me to lay on my back with my legs up against a wall at a 90 degree angle.  I was willing to try anything at that point, and an hour later I was actually feeling human again!  (Thanks Ashley!!!  I think that might be the most valued running advice anyone has ever given me!)  My husband took this picture of me, my medal & my awesome "ChEAR squad" about 5 or 6 hours after I finished the race.  It looks like it was a piece of cake, right?  :)

How I wound up signing up for marathon #2 is another story...