Pumpkin patchin'

Well, I ran 26.2 miles.  It wasn't pretty and I was 4 min slower than 2 years ago, which I'm pretty disappointed about, but I finished.  Reading my post from 2 years ago about my marathon, I was way more upbeat about it back then than I am today.  I don't think I failed, I definitely finished, but this time it felt a lot harder. 

I'll start from the beginning, I suppose.  =)  Friday I had a work conference that I had to go to, so I wasn't able to leave work until 5pm.  Our car got fixed on Thursday so Chris, Maddox, Damian, and his girlfriend (Callie) all left from Mt. Vernon after Maddox got out of school.  My sister, Nancy, picked me up from work once I got back from the conference and we went over the mountains.

Friday night I had an awful pain in the right side of my abdomen.  I mean, it was terrible.  I couldn't get to sleep at all.  I was laying on the floor in my parents' dining room about midnight thinking I had appendicitis.  I kept thinking about how I was going to run a marathon a day after getting my appendix out.  I googled it on my phone and found out that (thankfully) my appendix is on my left side, but then I started wondering if maybe I was one of those people where all the internal organs are on the opposite side.

I don't know exactly how I fell asleep, but I finally did and when I woke up I felt fine.  My best guess (and I'm pretty sure it's accurate) is that I had a bad case of gas.  I had been eating pretty heavy foods all week and then sat in a conference all day and then rode in a car all evening with my sister holding in my gas.  When I was finally able to sleep it all came out.  (Sorry for the really gross picture in your head now.)

Crisis averted, we went to a pumpkin patch on Saturday.  It wasn't as nice as the one that we usually go to at home, but we were unable to go at home because of our car issues the week and a half before.  It was a large party that went (parents, sister, niece, Chris, my kids, Damian's gf, Chris's brother and his dad).  Everyone picked out whatever pumpkins they wanted and then most everyone wanted to go in the corn maze.  I decided not to so that I wasn't on my feet that long, but the maze was actually rather small.

We've been doing this photo since Maddox was born.

I got sidetracked looking at these pictures and went looking for all my pumpkin patch pictures. Here's my collage.  =)

After the pumpkin patch, we all split up, my sisters (Barbara and Nancy) and I went to get my race packet and refresh their memories of the route I was going to be running. 

I think I will end here and finish the marathon story in another post.