3 lb.

At mile 24, I made myself a deal. If I would just power through the last 2.2, dietary discipline would be tossed to the wayside for seven days.

It worked; my legs kept revolving toward a mirage of milkshakes and chicken strips. But my week of gluttony, combined with rest from most physical activity, has taken its toll. The scale whimpered when I stepped onto it this morning.

In other news: even though we had decided to take a week of rest, Luke and I declared three days long enough on Tuesday night.

This is what running felt like Wednesday morning:

Gummi bears + secrets.

Marathon #2 was infinitely less awful/more f*cking awesome than marathon #1.

• No injuries. Not one.
• Perfect, perfect, perfect weather.
• We had a whole bunch of friends & family cheering us on/paparazzi-ing the whole way.
• They had gummi bears at mile 23. Horse hooves or not, that sh*t is magic.
  
• My mile time improved by almost a minute and a quarter.
• There was food after.

Roommate's family pretty much rocks; they hosted two barbecues in our honor, gave us places to sleep and drove from point to point to cheer us on. Her brother came through with totally rockin' race shirts with our names on the front (so strangers could also cheer for us by name...and they did)! He also printed bright blue shirts for the fam so we could spot them far off in the distance every few miles, cameras in hand and SUPER excited for us. This may sound like a bit much, but these things go a long way after a few hours of pounding the pavement.

We also had a bike gang comprised of The Boyfriend, Tom and Carey, who woke up at 3 am Washington time to see us off at the start line. (Race started at 6 am Missoula time, which is 5 am here.) They bicycled the 26 miles alongside the course to be our second cheer squad and make extra sure every millisecond of the experience was documented in video and photo form.

It should also be noted that Carey bought me a Dairy Queen Butterfinger Blizzard on the way home from the race.

I finished in 3:49:41, a half-hour improvement over my first attempt. My ranking was 176/596 and 2/26 for my age group. Even thought it doesn't mean a thing in terms of objective performance, I'm pretty thrilled to have come in 2nd for my age. Just 'cuz I'm needlessly competitive like that.

I think all athlete-types have two sets of goals: those that we admit to people and the slightly unrealistic ones we're actually shooting for.

Both Luke and I were secretly aiming for times around 3:30, even though our official goal was to finish in under four hours. So even though officially speaking, I totally met my goal, there's a twinge of disappointment that I didn't make it in under 3:40, which would have qualified me to run in the next Boston Marathon. I don't even really care about running that particular race, but it seems to be some sort of marathoner badge of honor to get there.

As such, we have set our eyes on the Portland Marathon in October -- and on a speedwork-focused training regimen. My official goal for this one is to qualify for Boston, which requires me to shave about ten minutes off my time. This is totally possible. My half-marathon split was 1:49:06, which would have worked out to under 3:40 if I'd kept it up.

My secret over-ambitious goal shall remain, as it should be, secret.