There they are. The three medals I earned this weekend. One for the half, one for the full, and one for completing the challenge.

And what a weekend. As y’all know, I participated in the Seabrook Lucky Trail Marathon CHALLENGE this weekend. On Saturday, I ran a half marathon. Today, I ran the full. Crazy.

I’m back at the house watching some tv and trying to keep myself from eating everything in the fridge. I’m usually pretty hungry after a run, but today’s really strange. I am super hungry and I’m eating everything that’s in sight.

Perhaps because I didn’t have my usual beer and bbq ribs after the run. But for some reason, I didn’t feel like having any. Oh! But I did have my first soda in nine weeks! About time!!! And Yum!!!

So how did it go? You maybe asking yourself.

Well… yesterday was fun. I had a nice easy run and finished the 13.1 miles in 2:10:22.4 hours (a 9:57-minute pace) and finished in 144th place. Not too shabby since there were 417 people that actually ran the half marathon.

But the coolest thing is that I finished in 10th place in my age group. How about that?!

I haven’t finished top-10 in any race since I ran X-country in high school. I know I was definitely far behind the actual top-10 finishers. But the fact that I was 10th in my age group was nice. Especially since this is the last year I’ll be in the 20-29 age group. Next year I get to run w/ the 30-somethings and that’s going to be different. It’s going to be a bunch of old guys racing to see who can get first to the restroom at the finish line.

The cool thing is that, by looking at the race results from Saturday, you can see that I wasn’t too far behind from placing higher in my age group.

But I’m not really all that worried about that because I was saving a lot of my energy for today’s race. Doing a half marathon is not a challenging thing these days, considering I ran more than a half marathon on each of my two days off from work in February. But in thinking about the fact that I would have to turn around and run a full marathon the next day kept me pretty honest. So, I had to make it a point to keep a slower pace yesterday and not kill my legs for today.

Today’s race was fun. The race results are not up on the web site yet, but I’m sure they’ll get on there soon.

All I know is that I finished around the 4:59:12 hour mark. Yay! I actually finished another marathon in under five hours. Of the ten marathons that I have done, I’ve only had two under-five-hour finishes prior to today.

That’s pretty exciting on a few levels. No. 1, I did a sub-five-hour marathon. No. 2, I ran a half marathon yesterday. No. 3, the race was on dirt trails, which are supposed to give you slower finishing times. And No. 4, I did not cramp up.

That’s right. I ran all 39.3 miles and only stopped three times. The first time when the half marathon was over; the second today at mile 16 when I pulled over to handle a nature call and water a tree; and the third at the finish line.

All of this w/o much pain, actually. I figured the second half of today’s marathon was going to be painful, but luckily, I didn’t hurt much. It was more of a mental challenge, at that point.

I was tired and going a little insane because the course was broken into loops that were about 6.something miles. Meaning, I had to go twice around the same course yesterday during the half. And go four today during the full. After six laps around that place, I think I’m still spinning.

The thing that kept me from going completely insane was the support from my girls, who were there in full force to cheer me on and give me much-needed supplies.

I really have to give it up to them. Not only did Frankie worked real hard to convince the race director to allow me to sign up for the race, since I was too late for registration a week ago. But she, along with Tay, also managed to have all the right supplies _ such as gatorade, gu packs, powerbars, bananas, and cheers _ as I pushed through while pounding out the miles step by step.

On top of that, we woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday to head down to the race. Luckily, we found a hotel and stayed the night and we woke up at 5:30 a.m. today, which was nice to get an extra hour of sleep. Still, the girls were in full spirits bright early. That meant a lot to me.

Here’s a quick video from my final stretch at the end of the marathon, AKA the 39.3-mile marker:

That’s just a quick video. More to come soon (Frankie will edit a full version from the two races, she said).

In all, things were a lot of fun and I now have 10 marathons under my belt. I had two great races and my training continues. Because, as you know, my next biggest challenge is running a 50-mile ultra-marathon someday in the near future.

Yeah, I’m insane.