Prairie Fire Marathon

I ran my first marathon on October 9.  I was super excited but nervous that I wouldn't be able to run the whole thing.  My training went good and I was hoping the run would go just as good.  I found out the Thursday before that I was going to have to have surgery to remove a cyst on my right ovary.  This was scarier than the marathon to me!  My surgery was scheduled for the Thursday after the marathon.  I asked the dr if the cysts could have been caused from all my running, but he said no.  He said that there could be pain running due to them because it was like a ball bouncing around in there.  I hadn't had any real pain yet. 

The day of the marathon, I woke up ready to go!  When the race started, I knew I didn't feel right.  Aftet mile 3, my stomach was killing me and I was hoping I was just hungry so I ate some GU and kept going.  I ran probably faster than I should of just to get done faster and hoped the pain would go away.  By mile 10, I had to start walking a little in between running just to help my stomach.  I was so bummed.  I trained so hard for this and now I couldn't even run 13 miles (a half marathon) without walking.  I did finish even though I was in so much stomach pain.  My time was 5 hours and 7 minutes.  I am proud of myself for finishing, but I'm ready for the next one to redeem myself! 

I'm starting to think that the pain was caused by the cysts because after my surgery I had pain in the same area of my stomach.  I chalk it all down to bad timing!