Marine Corps Marathon - Part 3 - The FINISH!!

Part 3 .... Yes, we FINISHED!!!.......

Miles 21-25: Crystal City.....pain in the quad.....OMG I have to walk again.....But the spectators were blasting the music and dancing and that kept my mind off it for the most part!! Really bad when you look at your watch and go "we can still beat 5 hours if we can do 2 more miles in 30 minutes" LOL

Miles 26-26.2 (.5 per Garmin): Very hard, uphill to Iwo, spectator ran into the runners to video his friend. Hope he got it on tape us yelling at him to "move out of the way". Then we heard our RMR ladies cheering for us, we held hands and finished together. As I almost decked the guy next to me for trying to block me LOL

After crossing that finish line, Crystal and I gave each other a huge hug and that's when the tears started.  Walking up to get our medals, the road was lined with Marines giving high fives and congratulating the runners.  It was awesome, just awesome!!!    And we BEAT Hurricane Sandy!!  Thank goodness!!

Then we headed into the area where the Marines were presenting the medals :)  No words...lots of emotion!!  WE DID IT!!

Saluted by a Marine presenting my medal.  Seriously in awe of these guys.  They're awesome!!

Unfortunately, after we got our medals, it went downhill from there.  We waited a bit to get our Finisher Photo done, but it gave us time to touch base with our friends and families!  I reported in to my husband that we were alive and well, and I got a big congratulations call from him and Michael.

FINISHER!!!

Now to wait to get all the photos from along the course :)

We headed to the Finish Area to get our drop bags and meet up with our friends.  It seemed like MILES to get there!  Didn't we do enough already ??   We found "Miles" along the way for a picture since we missed him at the Expo!!  

Me, Miles, and Crystal

Looking good for 26.2 in our recovery jackets.  These were actually toasty warm!

Run Mama Run ladies!! 

We finally got our stuff, found our friends, and decided to head on home.   OMG, the line to get into the Metro and/or shuttle buses were insane!!  I mean, it would have been over an hour to get IN to the Metro station.  So we walked (another MILE) to the next stop UPHILL to the next Station.  Best move though.  We got right on the train and headed home!  Walked back to the hotel, grabbed a Starbucks for the road, and got the car from the Valet!  Traffic was easy out of DC, so we were home quickly!! 

What an adventure this was.  I was lucky to have awesome friends along the way to take this on with!

Will I ever do another marathon.....???  Right now, I can't say "never" because the Marine Corps Marathon was so wonderful!  But I am really looking forward to going back to running Half Marathons and having some down time!

OOOOORAH!!!