I love my first born baby boy. He’s sweet and funny and quite a handful at times. He’s just perfect.

However, my second baby is almost here. The marathon.

Having been pregnant with a baby, growing it inside me and laboring it out was a pretty crazy and life changing experience.

This marathon training has been no different. It has been a labor of love.

I made a decision to tackle a marathon. I fell in love with the idea. I then discussed it with my husband. I got his buy in on this crazy idea. Just like I did with having a baby.

Getting to the point of committing to a marathon didn’t come that easy. I had to build a base and it was frustrating at times. Just like getting pregnant didn’t come that easily either.

Once I committed to the idea, the real work began. The training plan was made, revised and then embarked on. There were good days and bad days. Just like pregnancy.

Every week I made it was a victory. Every week got tougher, the challenges bigger. The rewards were sweeter though. Every week that went by was another week closer to survival. Just like those many, many weeks of pregnancy.

Once I got past the 18 mile run mark my chances of finishing a marathon greatly increased. Just like that 27th (or so) week of pregnancy.

I’ve now gotten over the hardest physical part of training. It’s time to taper, recover, reflect and get ready for the big day. This is different from pregnancy… Miles decided to join us 3 weeks earlier than expected. So now, I’m in foreign waters.

I have time to relax, recover and get ready for the big day. Maybe too much time. Too much thinking, doubting, freaking out.

Can I make it 26.2 miles?

Will I run smart the first half so I can survive that second half?

Will I have horrible stomach issues the day of?

Will the weather be complete crap?

Will my knee and IT band revolt on me?

Will the experience on race day be all I’m hoping it will be?

I realize most of these issues are out of my control and stressing over it is worthless. However, I feel like these thoughts are all part of the marathon experience so I’m embracing them and letting my mind mull them over.

What I do know for sure is that I’ve given it all I’ve got and will continue to do so for the next few weeks.

I’ve grown and become a stronger woman that I ever was. Regardless of how race day goes no one can take away the miles I’ve ran, the sweat I’ve poured, the tears I’ve shed, and the laughter I’ve shared.

How do you prepare for a big event in your life?

Don’t forget to enter my RUN hoodie giveaway!!!

2 days post 20 miler I’m feeling pretty in love with running. Though, that’s not always the case I am sure reveling in it for now. There are good days and bad days with running. It’s a complicated relationship. Remember my Dear Running letter? Sure, the past 5 months or so have been pretty great but I know tough times will be ahead. I have no doubt we’re in it for the long haul though.

You know what else? I love this blog. I’ve met some of my now best friends because of this little ole blog and it’s been a great outlet for me in so many ways.

So the best way to mush these two loves together is to team up with the awesome Relay Runner and show some love to all of you.

The Relay Runner is an pretty cool guy also know as Christian. He runs a lot and rocks it at a lot of relays. He’s currently coming back from an injury and has big things ahead for sure!

He also sells these AWESOME hoodies… perhaps you’ve seen me in mine? I wear it ummm like every day. Not only is it awesome, but SO comfy. I love it.

So to celebrate my love for running, blogging, meeting new friends and my marathon that is only less than 3 weeks away – how about we give away not 1, not 2, but 3 of these awesome hoodies!?

Here’s how you can enter (there are a lot of ways!)… leave a SEPARATE COMMENT FOR EACH ENTRY. Choose to do as many or as few as you’d like.

• Leave a comment here on why you love to RUN.
• Tweet about this giveaway… I love to RUN, just like @KimiKay & @TheRelayRunner!  http://asliceofkiwi.com/?p=2627
• Share the link to this post on Facebook http://asliceofkiwi.com/?p=2627
• Like A Slice of Kiwi on Facebook
• Like The Relay Runner on Facebook
• Follow The Relay Runner on Twitter

I will pick 3 winners via random.org on Wednesday, October 5th. Entries due by 12 PM EST. Then you can pick the size of your choosing! Trust me, you want to win one of these hoodies!

Week fourteen of training has been just a tad bit crazy. I started the week sure that I was going to be injured and have to ditch all my hard work and ended the week on a high from the Akron Marathon relay and killing a 20 mile run. That’s a PDR, by the way!

Planned Week & Actual Week:

INJURY UPDATE: I tried to take really good care of my left leg this week. I iced, I stretched, I rolled. REPEAT. I still ran, just to see how the progress was going. Thursday night I had a breakthrough with a racquetball ball. I was doing some myofascial massage (rolling on the tiny ball under my hip) and had a very noticeable release of pressure. It just felt like sweet sweet relief in my hip. SCORE! I instantly felt relieved thinking this was probably the root of my pain in my hip, along my IT band and in my knee. I knew I wan’ts totally healed, but this was certainly a turning point.

Saturday during the relay I had zero pain while running, and just tightness and some soreness afterwards. This made me feel infinitely better about facing 20 miles today.

We planned to start our long run at 6:15 AM today at Christie’s. Heather was going to run the first 12-13 with us (she killed it), then we’d continue on. Unfortunately traffic had other plans and there was an accident on a bridge with traffic at a total hault. I started to freak. We were NOT moving. Finally, after some text encouragement from Christie, I got the balls to drive through and up a very steep grassy median. Thank goodness I had my car and not Mike’s Prius.

So we got a later start than we would have preferred but whatevs. We cruised around a big ole loop and covered 13 miles and ended up back at Christie’s. Heather said peace out and Christie and I then had our quickest transition (refilling water bottles) to date I think. We were back to pounding the pavement in 90 seconds or less.

Restarting, even after such a quick stop, did pain my knee a little. After 3 or so minutes though it was fine. Good incentive not to stop during the marathon I guess!

The last 7 miles went pretty good. There wasn’t much talking but we desperately held on to our sub 11 pace and only snuck over it for a few of the miles.

All 20 splits:

1. 11:21
2. 10:54
3. 10:49
4. 10:57
5. 10:32
6. 10:37
7. 10:49
8. 10:35
9. 10:50
10. 10:35
11. 10:43
12. 10:45
13. 10:43
14. 10:47
15. 11:00
16. 11:03
17. 10:55
18. 10:54
19. 10:55
20. 10:57

Good enough for 10:50 overall pace. I’m happy with it. It was by far the best I’ve felt on a run that long. Way better than I felt on our 18 miler. Post run I got to have my face eaten off my Christie’s amazingly cute puppy, Zeus.

This run was exactly what I needed going into sweet sweet taper. I feel confident (about finishing) and excited for the marathon!

Factoids from this week:

• I love carbs.
• Be patient with an injury. Take care of yourself.
• I have the BEST husband ever for being a rockstar dad while I am off having fun with the relay gals and trotting 20 miles. Don’t worry I bought him some beer and an iTunes gift card today. Oh, and steaks tonight! (I’m slightly excited about that too!)

Goals from last week – ALL MET!

Goals for the upcoming week –

• In bed by 9:30 every night! Except for tomorrow, I’m have a Chicago round trip and will be back late.

What is something awesome you’ve done lately?

The past two days have been, in a word, awesome. Another word might be amazing. I might even make up a word and call it Muskierific.

Yesterday I met up with 4 other super great Muskingum alumni ladies at the Akron Marathon expo. We picked up our goodies, I stocked up on body glide, and we got this awesome photo…

… yes that’s a stuff muskie fish in my hand that is creepin’ in on Molly. He went everywhere with us.

My favorite part of the expo? Well, meeting Hal Hidgon was cool… but I was way more pumped to meet the one and only Darris Blackford – race director for The Columbus Marathon. Oh, and that’s not all. I met his awesome wife, Star! They are a seriously awesome duo and the nicest people ever. Oh, and they both raced and did awesome today!

Post-expo we dinned at Bravo on LOTS of carbs and shared laughter and got to know each other better. You see, though we share the bond of the long magenta line… we didn’t all go to school at the same time or know each other. Everyone met at least 1 or more person on our team for the first time in person yesterday. However, after only a few minutes we were like old friends.

Then we headed across the street to our sweet suite at the hotel, got our gear ready and had our team meeting. We reviewed race logistics, handoff spots and estimated leg start times and our finish time. You’ll notice we estimated our finish time at 11 AM exactly. Remember that.

Finally it was bed time. Molly promised us she wouldn’t wake up and strip off her clothes like she sometimes is known to do I guess. I was a tad nervous to be sharing a bed with her after this announcement.

Before I knew it the 4:30 AM cell phone alarms were all blowing up in our room and we slogged around and got on our jazzy outfits and headed out to get on our shuttle bus.

We arrived to the start line shortly before 6 am and huddled together. We got to see Justin who proclaimed he was out to go sub-4 for the full… and he did. I got to meet AudgePodge1 which was super fun. She is totally awesome and rocked the full marathon too!

I was the first leg so I went and lined up with thousands of others and got to hang out with Justin and Beal. I even ran near Beal off and on for most of my leg. He also went on to kill it in the half and went sub 2!

I really enjoyed my leg. It was a tad congested to start as expected and was a pretty easy out and back loop. I had a few hills, but nothing compared to the later legs! My leg was 3.5 miles long and my splits went something like this…

• Mile 1 – 9:16
• Mile 2 – 9:12
• Mile 3 – 8:32
• Mile .5 – 4:05

Ummm not too shabby, I’ll take it.

I handed off to Chelsea, got some high fives from Molly and Jen before they headed far far away to their relay zones, and headed out with Jess to her relay zone.

We waited a bit, got to cheer on Ryan as he was cruising by and before we knew it our number was called. Jess got ready and the handoff was made! Chelsea did awesome!

Chelsea and I then decided to head towards the finish. Unfortunately it wasn’t logistically possible for her and I to head out to see Jess and Jen’s exchange or Jen and Molly’s either. Jess & Jen both did awesome too! We did get to stop at Starbucks, which was clutch.

We set up camp at the mile 26 marker which made for prime cheering and hanging out.

In no time we got to see Ryan cruise to a sub 3:05 full marathon! He was awesome! Congrats, Ryan!

We got to see the top woman finish the full, lots of other fast people too. Tons of people were still finishing the half as well. We also got to meet a random Muskingum alum that happened to be walking by after finishing the half. I LOVE MUSKIES!

Jess and Jen showed up after a while and we were catching up for maybe 5 minutes and looked at the clock. It was approximately 10:52 AM and we figured we had about 5-8 minutes before Molly would be cruising by us. LITERALLY as we were saying this Jen yells something like… That girl is wearing an outfit like us. We all turn and look and then we realize Molly is FLYING by us and I think we were all in shock for like 3.2 seconds and then started screaming our faces off. Um seriously, that chica is FAST. Like, really fast.

We headed to the stadium, met up with Molly and got our race bling!

Remember how we predicted an 11 AM finish. Oh, we finished at 10:54… we are good at predicting and also good at crushing our goal! I think every single member ran faster than they had predicted.

So we ran the marathon in 3 hours, 54 minutes and 7 seconds. Good enough to earn us 25th place out of 164 in our relay division – and 314th out of 1109 total relay teams. That’s pretty legit if I don’t say so myself. I’m super proud of us!

There is something so special about the bond that Muskingum creates and I’m so glad I shared this experience with these ladies.

Day 7 on the 17 day diet. And my last. Kind of.

It’s been an interesting week eating wise. I certainly shocked my bod by going from carb crazy to no carbs for a few days. I’d say no carbs for a week, but that’s not true. I did my cheats for my runs and a few weak moments too.

I lost 4.4 lbs in one week on the 17 day diet, and that’s with my cheating. Um, that’s pretty nuts. I realize a bit of this is water weight since I was drinking my normal amount of water + green tea + lemon water.

But honestly even though it may have been good for my bod to flush out some junk and kick start my healthy balanced eating again… adhering strictly to the 17 day diet is not for me.

I felt tired, both physically and mentally. I’m convinced my knee/IT band is just pissed it’s not getting enough carbs.  

Also, I felt depressed almost. This could have been because of my injury uncertainty but I think a lot of was lack of carbs too. There were even a few moments where I told Stef I’d physically harm people for a slice of bread. I was pretty serious.

So where will I go from here? I certainly won’t let many parts of the 17 day diet go to waste. I plan to continue drinking green tea daily. It was a great habit I had years ago and then ditched when I got braces because it dyed my braces green. I will also be much more aware of how many carbs I’m consuming, and what kind of carbs. While a cookie every once in a while is OK, it is NOT OK for me to eat an entire pack of Lofthouse Frosted Sugar Crack Cookies in 2.5 days. I’d say I’ll be following the ideal of the 17 day diet 50% of the time for the next 3 weeks.

Though, this weekend I’ll definitely be making up for lost carb time since I have the Akron Marathon relay and then my 20 miler on Sunday!

I think the 17 day diet is great as a diet, with modifications (in my opinion). Also, if you are super active it might not be for you. Post-marathon I think I’ll ramp it back up to more of 75% of my eating and plan and see how it goes.

What’s your favorite carby goodness meal? I’m a sucker for a good chicken alfredo.