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Happy Friday! If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a great day…we had a wonderful holiday with both of our families in our new home. It really was a blessing…and I can’t wait to eat the leftovers!
Somehow time continues to fly and it’s the last Friday of November, meaning it’s time to share my Runfessions, aka running confessions along with Marcia from Marcia’s Healthy Slice!
Since I am still riding the high of completing my very first marathon, I thought I’d share some “real talk” about some of the less savory moments of the race.
Marathon Runfessions – November 2016 Click To Tweet
I am so proud to say that I completed the Philly Marathon and I am grateful that I made it through in one piece, especially with the wild winds we had to endure! But I did have some unexpected surprises, which I alluded to in my recap post. I thought I’d provide a few more details about the less glamorous things about the race, plus some typical Janelle rants with my runfessions, LOL!
One of the most unpleasant parts of the race was having GI issues during a large portion of the course. I may have been 5 miles in when I felt my first “twinge”…but because of where I started in the corral, there never seemed to be an opportunity to use a port-a-potty. Lines galore.
During my training, I only had one long run where I needed to stop to use the potty. Why oh why would I have this issue at the worst possible time? I gotta blame the flatbreads from Saturday night’s dinner.
When I ran the Broad Street Run back in 2012, I really had to pee during the race…but this was WAY worse than having to pee. I would feel fine for a while, and then suddenly, the danger of a really bad accident would come with a vengeance…thankfully, the worst never came to blows (literally), but I had a couple of close calls…
Call me crazy, but I was disappointed when I saw the marathon medal. I don’t like the shape and I don’t really care for Independence Hall. I guess it’s better than another Liberty Bell, but the 2015 medal looked so much cooler!
Bret ran the Philly Marathon in 2012 and they had HUGE medals that year. I’m really not a bling chaser at all, but considering this may be the only marathon I ever run, it would have been nice to have a cooler medal. Just sayin’!
Yes, I actually split my pants. I didn’t realize until I was finished with my race that I had two holes in my tights where my thighs rub together….and they weren’t small either! I used Body Glide on that area that morning, something I normally don’t do when I’m wearing tights, but I guess they just couldn’t handle the friction over 26.2 miles! I’m glad that I didn’t pay too much for them because I’ll have to throw them out! I checked my pictures and thankfully the split wasn’t visible, lol.
I had the day off on Thanksgiving Eve, so I scheduled a sports massage at a nearby spa in Chestnut Hill. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the right place to go. My massage therapist was really nice, but she hardly used any massage oil (who wants a dry massage?) and she was way too gentle on my legs. She told me that with a deep tissue massage the pain should be around a 7 out of 10, but I’ve had more pressure applied during a Swedish massage, which generally costs a lot less! Because I’m an idiot, I didn’t speak up, but I was so frustrated because my quads, hamstrings, calves, everything…were begging for attention.
I ended up paying $130 at the end of the day for a very expensive backrub and patdown. I guess my legs didn’t really need a massage after all.
I mentioned this already in my recap, but I wanted to get into a little more detail. I think the Philly Marathon is a really good race, but they’re going through some growing pains right now. This was the first year that they split up the half and full so I think they need to make some adjustments to ensure a successful race weekend for all of the runners. Communication needs to be substantially improved. The crowds were way too thin for a race of this size. And I would have loved to see more entertainment on the course. They introduced a Rocky Challenge where you would run the half marathon and full marathon in the same weekend, but it wasn’t well publicized (not that I would be crazy enough to do it anyway!).
I like running in new places, so I would love to run a different marathon one day, but where? I have heard great things about the Marine Corps Marathon and the Chicago Marathon, plus NYC looks like an amazing experience. I’m in no hurry to get back in the saddle, but I do get concerned that I won’t always have the luxury to spend so much time marathon training. Philly was a great introduction to marathon madness, so who knows where I’ll end up next year!
What crazy things have you experienced running a marathon or other race?
