My 1st Marathon Completed!

Finally the day arrived Sunday May 10 was Mother's day and also my marathon day. I set the alarm for 5:30am. Sun was supposed to rise at 5:35ish. So I wanted to start my run around 6am. My goal was not to stop. I didn' t have a set time of finishing or a pace but I was guessing around 5 hours for my run and a pace of 5:30-6:30. The day before I celebrated mother's day a day earlier so I can rest after my marathon. Mother's day prep consisted of me waking up at 6:45am and then prepping, cleaning, cooking and socializing till 4pm. So I had a very long day and I didn't really eat as well. So that wasn't a good start for my "carb intake" for my marathon. Bf bought pizza home for dinner so I had 3 slices. But overall, I definitely did not eat enough before my run and my sleeping hasn't been very good as well. So I started off the race pretty low energy. It hit me around 8k. Sleepy ness settled in and I was conserving my energy during this time. My goal was to run from 6am-11am. I wasn't sure if the lake was busy too because it was Mother's day but we had a back up plan to head to the urban trail if it became too busy to run/social distance. The plan was to run burnaby lake 4 times which is about 10k each loop. I started off slow to start then speeding it up till 8k. I started my morning taking a vitamin c drink plus an iron pill. Then during my run it was gel packs at every 7k. After the 2nd gel pack around 14K I was already looking forward to taking another one since my energy was low. Since we didn't have booths to grab water at, we also had to carry water packs. I had half a litre with me during this time with a 1 nuun tablet dissolved into the water and a few ice cubes to keep my water cold. The temperature started around 11 degrees and then it shot up to 18 degrees around 9am. Thank goodness the lake is mostly covered and shaded by trees. So the areas that were open, the sun will be pretty hot. After about the 2nd lap more ppl will show up. More runners. My bf suggested heading to urban trail after our 2nd lap but due to the sun being so hot and urban trail not being shaded at all I told him we should continue on to the 3rd lap at the lake. It was only some parts of the trail that was a gridlock with ppl (not sure why there was a 10 ppl running group happening during this time but it did). Anyways we continued our run. At 8k being tired I was worried because the last long run I did was a 35k and I wasn't tired till I hit 25. So I was very worried. So I kept drinking my water till the 3rd gel pack. We had 5 in total per person for the run. Everything went well. I tripped but my shoe rebounded fast so I didn't sprain my ankle. I'm glad I didn't have to pee or poo during my run. Bf had 2 washroom breaks. At about 38k my pace dropped till around 8. My legs and knees were tired. But I slowed my pace to conserve my energy. We had to do up to 42.5k because the file wouldn't read properly if we only did a 42.2. So I ran slower but at 41k I decided to give all I got. I was running around 5:30 pace. When bf announced that the race was done I quickly grabbed my phone and realized that my tracking time was off and I had another 1.5 to do. So I kept running till I hit 42.5. Overall, a great run. Not as hard as I thought. I wished it was the real thing because it felt like another training session to me. But it is a great accomplishment and I can finally say I had run a marathon. In the back of my head I wanted to do a triathlon. I really have to brush up my swimming skills to do 50 laps in the pool and I need to get a bike to practice cycling 40k but I got the running all good to go for a 10k run. Not sure how to train for the swimming part during this time but it will be a good accomplishment to finish a triathlon.