Going all the way

18 miles: 3:42. Not bad, I think I have the potential to hang w/ Katie Holmes in a marathon if I keep this up. It was a coooold day. Temperature-wise it probably wasn't any colder than last Saturday (the almanac doesn't say it was) but there was a wind factor that made it certainly feel colder. When we started it was about 25 degrees I think and it never got above 35 before I finished. Just about everything from the waist down is feeling pain today. I don't think any of it is a-typical, just typical for running long distance. At this rate though I need to buy more ice packs - 2 isn't getting the job done in a timely manner. And, I refuse to emerge myself in a tub full of ice cold water as is suggested by our coaches. I think I'd have to be held to gun point before I get that desperate. I ran most of it alone yesterday - I started out w/ Jill and Angela but they were only doing 9 because they are training for the 1/2, so our routes parted around mile 3 or so. Perhaps I should have thought about the 1/2? No, I'd feel like I was cheating myself and everyone that is sponsoring me. I mean, go for the gusto. One full marathon in a lifetime at least. As I was running yesterday, and my mind is always veering off to different places during those 3+ hours, I wondered who was higher at the time - me, when I signed up to do this back in July or Blondie, when she wrote the song Rapture? I don't do drugs, can't speak for Blondie. But that song - it was all the rage back when and I heard it out last weekend and for entertainment sake had to add it to my playlist. I called home yesterday (new topic), as I typically do after my Saturday runs because my mom has read one too many stories about people dying from marathons, and my mom wanted to know if I finished. Finished? Of course, is there an option? She's alluded to the fact before that I don't have to finish the whole thing if I don't want to. Not finish? What? Like run to mile marker 19 and say, OK, I think I'm done now - taxi! No disrespect to my mom - she just worries...like a mom - but there's no stopping now or on Jan 13th (unless I'm carted off to a medic tent, which isn't going to happen). I'm going all the way.