26.2 miles

 I've always wanted to run a marathon so last year a signed up for one on April 16th, when I signed up I had about 10 months to train and get ready for it. After training for a while I began to have problems with the IT Band in my right leg. After talking to several people I found that the only way for me to heal my leg was to rest it and quit running altogether for a time. So in January of this year, I had not run in about two months, I tried to go for another run to try my leg out again. I had only just began to run when the pain came back so I decided to quit running again and let it heal I thought that was it for my marthaon aspiration for that year. About a week before the marathon was scheduled to run I decided that since I couldn't get a refund of my entry fund I would just go down there and start the race, to get a feel for it, and then quit whenever my leg started to hurt. On race day I took a lap around the block where the starting line was (the first time I had run in the last four months) and stretched out.

Can you see me? I'm in the back towards the trees. There were about 8,000 runners there, which was good because the energy of the race carried me the first few miles

At mile 13 I felt really good, and decided to just try and run the whole thing. At mile 16 I  started feeling  pretty tired, at mile 19 I knew I was crazy to run a marathon with no training, but then again, whats another seven miles?? Over the next hour and a half I found out exactly what those last seven miles were, painful.

Well, I finished in 5hrs and 1 minute. Whenever I talk about doing it again and training for it the right way "this time." Mackenzie reminds me of the first thing I said after I finished, "that was the stupidest thing I've ever done."