Today was the BIG day, my 1st ever Marathon, 26.2 glorious miles of fun (and PAIN), at the Space Coast Marathon in Cocoa, FL over by the Kennedy Space Center, as this entire Marathon was Space Themed. I was ill-prepared, and definitely not qualified to be running a marathon, as I haven’t really done any training, but I still committed to running it today. The longest I’ve run this year was over at the Peachtree 10k back in July, which is only 6.2 miles… That means today, I would have ran 20 MORE miles than my LONGEST run. Ouch. And somehow, I did it. Slowly:

I didn’t have any unrealistic expecations, and I met my goal of under 6 hours. While that is more than double the time of the pro’s, for someone who has never ran anywhere near that long, and finished uninjured, I’m stoked 🙂

When it comes to running, we really love the bling:

This was VERY hard, but I’m very glad I did it. I’m not sure I’ll do another one, as this certainly checks off a box on the bucket list, but I’ll certainly keep doing my beloved shorter runs, like 5k, 10k, 15k, and perhaps a few half-marathons. And who knows, maybe one day, I’ll revisit the marathon, perhaps Disney style.

After burning 2,689 calories during the run, I’m sure you can imagine, I was HUNGRY! While the well-equipped course provided water, Gatorade, and GU Energy Gels, that certainly didn’t satiate me for long. Fortunately, I had my leftovers from yesterday’s meal, as I only ate half:

This was the meal all packaged up in the to-go container:

As I was out and about and far from home, I didn’t have utensils. But that wasn’t about to stop me from eating. I improvised and used whatever I could find…. Coffee stirrers:

While I attempted to use them like chopsticks, they were just too flimsy. Fortunately, I ordered Rigatoni so they fit easily inside the noodles and I could just lift them up. And for the Meatballs, I just got… stabby.

Here is the nutritional information for this meal: