7 Hours and 7 minutes

And I'm damn proud of that. This was the craziest race ever!

First of all arrived in Honolulu and got to condo with no problems whatsoever. Had dinner with training partners family and then TP, her Mom and I headed back to the condo and too bed.
Saturday- Picked up our race packs and toured the expo a bit. GU was there sampling some of their gels. The lime tastes just like key lime pie. Very obvious that out of the 25000 people signed up for this 16000 where Japanese. Their running clubs were well represented.

Mom and TP went off for Vietnamese but because that hadn't been a part of my training I went off on my own. Toured this gigantic mall called Ala Moana Centre. It's 55 sq miles, no Victoria Secret but they had a Sephora where I did a bit of damage. Unfortunately got blisters on my feet from my mary jane crocs...not a great start. Picked up some first aid and went to bed early.

Race day- Up at 2:30am, had breakfast, got dressed, taped the blisters and loaded the hydration packs and packed the fuel gels put the timing chip on runners. Headed out at 4:30am, got to start line and lined up under the 6hrs and over bannner. It was craziness. I took pictures that I'll post in the next few days.

It took 28min to actually cross the start line. At the 3 mile mark there were about 20 Japanese racers lined up at Jack in the Box....not sure why.

We had our best times up to the 20K mark and then we both hit a mall at about 30k. This race was crazy because you spent more time going around people then forward. When you think of it their were 1000 people for every mile. We probably did our slowest 12k ever but we crossed that finish line in one piece. Because the majority didn't speak English saying " on your left" was useless.

It was taxing, it was hot and people were throwing their used cups and sponges into the middle of the road so some areas were pretty slippery. We went up and down Diamond Head twice, first time fantastic, second time rough. There was a guy racing in a Yoda costume complete with rubber mask, one guy in flip flops with the timing chip strapped on. The guy that really got everyone's attention was racing in a Sumo training (diaper?). I saw a naked butt up a head and thought I was imaging things. The very last person crossed the finish line at 15hrs. Huge kudos to that guy.

We passed a load of runners and a lot of people who didn't look like they trained for this at all. I now know why they say don't aim for your best time at this race.

When the race was over it was like an obstacle course to find your finishing t-shirt. Your body is completely exhausted and now you have to navigate around a park trying not to trip on roots because you can't pick up your feet.

We had to take public transit back to the condo which wasn't too bad and then TP and I hit the living room floor and stayed their for 2 hours. I got a few more blisters and thought I had sprained my big toe, she had a swollen ankle and all of the muscles in our bodies ached. We pried off running shoes and ate real food (it will be awhile before I can look at a gel again). We both vowed never again.

The next day at Starbucks which we walked very slowly too and cursed any unlevel sidewalks and stairs (there were lots). Her Mom almost spit out her coffee when TP and I looked at each other and said ...next time. Mom was wicked race support lugging cheese and crackers, chocolate milk and gatorade to the finish line and finding both us in sorry shape. She just rocks.

For the next 5 days we couldn't go far, I'm not kidding it didn't take much to make you hurt again. On the Tuesday we went for massages at the Aveda spa and of course they said they couldn't do deep tissue massage because our bodies were simply not ready. We knew this of course but even a gentle massage helped. It takes 21 days to recover from a Marathon so we're both taking it easy.

We did attend a WW meeting at the YWCA in Honolulu. They have a great leader! We picked up some bars that we don't have or didn't have when we left and we got the new booklets about the tweaked program. I'm still going to try to get a set from my meeting on Saturday to see if US and Canada differ. Oh yeah the weigh in results were very interesting. I was up 6.8 and TP was up 10. We know we were retaining water and of course weighed in at the end of the day. So know the mission is to be back on track.

Suprisingly when we got home we both felt better, probably because neither one of us did much on the Saturday...got home at 2am.

Spent the last two days not doing too much, trying to fend off a flu that TP came down with in the last 3 days of Honolulu. We watched a lot of season 2 of Top Chef :) I have been back on points for the past two days.

This weekend off to visit Dad for Christmas, which will be interesting he was completely opposed to Hawaii and we've had a bit of a rough patch lately. This will be the first time I've laid eyes on him in over 2 months.

Back to work tomorrow of course.

I haven't read anyone's blogs yet but I'm looking forward to catching up.

Sonya- Did you have the baby?

Hugs to all!