Race Recap: The Pittsburgh Marathon Relay 2014

Last year, I worked at the health and fitness expo for the Dick's Sporting Goods Pittsburgh Marathon.  I had such a great time and seeing the excitement of all the runners made me excited.  I left that day thinking that the marathon was something that I really wanted to do.  No, I have no plans of running the full marathon.  I really wanted to just run in it.

The marathon relay is a great option for those starting out.  I decided that I was going to get a team together for the marathon relay this year.  I put out a note on Facebook to see if anyone would be interested and just like that, I had a team....in literally, minutes!

I was so excited and so was the rest of my team.  We all did our training separately for each of our legs of the race. My leg was 6.1 miles so I just followed a training program for a 10k.  It was a great way for me to prepare for it.

Here's me after one of my training runs:

This was one of my last runs, supposed to be easy and I pushed myself.

Leading up to the race, there was a ton of information and you could say that I was getting a bit overwhelmed and instead of the information making me feel more prepared, I was feeling more nervous although I am sure that was not their intention.

Fast forward to race morning.....

The race started at 7am so that meant that we had to get up around 4am in order to get ready, meet up and head down to the city.  I was awake before my alarm even went off. Thank goodness I laid everything out that I needed the night before because it made my morning go much smoother.  We arrived down in the city with plenty of time to spare for walking to the start and figuring out where we needed to be, gear check and feeling prepared and ready.

I had to ride a shuttle bus to get to my starting point and then I waited...and waited....and waited.

I was feeling like I was going to have a bad run because I was standing around for so long waiting. My back was starting to hurt and my joints were sort of sore from the cold (does that make me sound like an old lady?!)

My friend came running up and I was so happy to see her and I think she was happy to see me (it meant she was done running!) I took off and was feeling okay to begin with.  I started to get into my stride and pace pretty comfortably.  I had my Map My Run app going but I had my earphones plugged into something else for music so I wasn't hearing my mileage as I was running.  This was both aggravating and liberating to me.  I am so used to knowing where I am with my mileage but it was nice to not concentrate on that and just enjoy the course.

I felt like I was running a little faster than I normally run when I am on the roads but I felt good and the energy of the spectators and fans was electrifying.  I was smiling, saying "thank you", giving high fives to kids along the way and I loved every single minute of my run.

I was coming up to the end of my leg of the race and I could see my friend waiting for me. She got a picture of me too which was nice to see....I didn't look like I was absolutely dying haha.

Before we knew it, it was all over and we were done!  We did it and we were so proud and happy to have done it. I think we all had a great experience.  Even my poor friend who experienced a terrible blister on her foot and ended up having to hobble her way to the end of her leg of the race.  She was a champ and didn't want to let us or herself down so she really pushed herself to get there.

Here's the picture of our team after the race!