Congrats Colleen!!!! Way to go!!! I am so impressed and inspired! What an accomplishment!!!! Can't wait to read the RR from you. Hope you have lots of stories to share!

Whooooooooooo hoooooooooooooo WTG Pluggin!!!!! I woke late this am but caught some of the TV coverage, I wanted to see our Pluggin but they kept showing that Lance Armstrong dude! Then I got to work and could check one time on the site to see how things was going but then later when I tried again my work had blocked access to the site, I was so stinking mad, I don't know why I just spent 9 years working for them LOL Lucky for me I could look at our coolrunning thread to see the good news tho I could not log in to post. Pluggin I am so proud of you and I hope the muscles are only giving you a good hurt now

Up here in Alaska WW does the monthly pass so I pay $39.99 for unlimited meetings and online access. When I did online only I think that was $16.95 a month.

Well I am still playing catch up from my weekend away, I did not see the whales but did see lots of other cool stuff, harbor seals, steller sea lions, porpoises (sp?) sea otters, mountain goats and a zillion eagles I hope I got some good pics to show you all later in the week. Today has been crazy at work, first day of training my replacement, who is good and sweet but there is a reason I am not a teacher LOL.

I did not WI yesterday because of my trip, tomorrow morning I will take a peak on the scale to see if I still have any chance of making goal this coming Sunday, it was looking good before the trip so I hope the beer and cookie and regular bagel with real cream cheese has not sent me too far off track!

Well I am going to go find the rest of last weeks post to see all I missed then am heading to bed for me beauty sleep and will catch you all tomorrow with personals and hopefully the glorious race report from our Bostoner

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I'm a Weightwatcher runner

Lifetimer still learning to maintain

Starting weight 228.5
Goal weight 135
current weight 139

Hi Guys!!

Thanks for all the love on the board over the past few days/months! It was such an amazing experience - this whole journey to the Boston Marathon! Boy was I pleased to see that Happy posted that she saw me and that I took her picture! I was afraid afterwards that there was a chance it was like my Michelle sighting of a few months ago that I snapped someone's pic that was thinking afterwards - boy that was weird! LOL Michelle I heard someone yell to me something about Pluggin away but by the time my brain registered it I couldn't figure out where it came from. I wish I had been able to make eye contact with you but I did hear it. The crowd size was CRAZY.

So here is my full report:

I got up at 4:30 for an early start to the day! I needed to be out the door by 6 and wanted plenty of time to take care of my morning business - which I was not succesful with - more will surface about this later! Sooo, I got the bus and we made our way down to Hopkington and we found our way to the church that the Dana Farber team was waiting at. This team is 550 strong so there were plenty of people there and we had food/heat/portapottys etc.. Very comfy environment waiting for the time to head to the corrals. After a team shot my friend and I left the church to see if we could watch the elite runners start and we were able to nudge our way in to actually watch them take off - very cool. Those yellow sneakers came out fast! I never did get a Lance sighting though but I was ok with that.

After the first wave left the corrals at 10:00 we headed in to ours and waited about 5 minutes for the 10:30 start. Once we started moving - or should I say walking it took about 8 minutes to get to the start and then we were off. I watched my pace and only ran the first mile in the 9 range. After that we went right to 10:30 miles. We wanted to stay around 10:30 - 10:45 for as long as we could. We held a steady pace for the first half of the course. Around mile 8 I knew that I was going to need to stop at a portapotty along the route. My lack of morning success was becoming an issue but all the portapottys had long lines. So we watched and at mile 15 there was one with only 4 people in line. We stopped. This ate up 6 minutes time BUT needed to be done. As fate would have it there was no toilet paper in this single potty - UGHH. All in all I was thankful it was there with our without paper! So off we went. DH & DS were at mile 16 and we stopped there for 3 minutes taking pictures. They didn't have the camera on and my neighbor couldn't figure out how to use our digital so it took more time than I would have liked - BUT these pictures will be priceless! A mile or so down the road my daughter called to me and it was another minute or so stop for pictures with her. Within that next mile I saw Happy with a Keep Pluggin Away sign - it had to be her right? She asked how I was doing I told her and I ran off and then thought geez I have to get a picture. I brought a disposable camera with me on the run (and I am so glad I did - priceless shots) and I ran back and snapped a picture of Happy with her sign. Off we went. No more stops before the finish line for us!

I was now in the hills of Newton between miles 17-21. The 4th hill is the one known as Heartbreak Hill. I love hills and these were no exceptions!! I was amazed at how many people were walking during the route. I am proud to say that we did not walk one step on this course. We stopped for photo ops and a potty BUT we ran every mile! When I got to mile 22 I KNEW that I had to run 11:30's or faster to beat the 5 hour window. So these are the final miles and we had to up the pace - not easy to do! There were no more hills though so I dug deep and we started running 11:20's which at this point was all I had - LOL. Hereford Street was a blessed sight as I knew when I crested this small hill I would take a left and it would be .20 to the finish (found this out on my run in Boston the weekend prior - maybe it was a good thing?? Hmmm) So we took the final left and I gave it all I had. We were passing people left and right - it was awesome! I can't even begin to tell you how strong I felt coming down that street. We crossed the finish and I thought I had beat my five hour window by a couple of minutes. We made our way through the ending area - got our mylar blankets, chips off, medals on - posed for a picture and we were off to get our bus. The bus was leaving Boston at 4p.m. whether we were on it or not!

The streets were a little tricky for us to find the bus BUT we found it with a whole 4 minutes to spare! On the bus we made a phonecall which gave us our official time 4:59:59 - It all hit me then that I had done what I had set out to do. The emotion of it came over me like a wave. I did not want to feel disapointed with any time on that clock BUT I knew myself and I knew that if it had said 5 hours I would have this slight disapointment in me (even though I didn't want to feel that way). I had done it without even one second to spare. How does that happen?? For months I have been quoting 4:59:59 or better that's all I want and that ended up being my official time - felt like fate I swear. A part of me believes that maybe, just maybe all those angels I had on my back gave me the strength in those final miles. Sappy I know but a part of me does believe that I had some divine intervention.

We got back to the hotel, showered and it was off to the afterparty. We had a great dinner, there was music and drinks. I had made sure I rehydrated well with propel, powerade and water before even having a beer. All systems were a go so we ended the evening with one conga line dance! Yup, in flip flops I was dancing in a conga line last night at 9:30! LOL

Today, all my muscles are feeling surprisingly great. I can go up and down stairs with no issues and have only the smallest amount of muscle soreness - no different than after a long run. I did get a nasty blister on the side of my big toe and one on my 3rd toe on the same foot. Other than that I have no battle wounds and only great memories!!

Thanks for all your support!! It has helped me a lot through this process!!

Amazing story Colleen! Again, we are all so proud of you! Can I ask how you got your number? I was researching last night and couldn't figure out how without the qualifiying time - which is crazy 3:30:00???? Who does that??? Not me! That after party sounds like so much fun, I can totally see you doing the conga! You go girl! So what is up for the future? Are you doing the Manchester marathon? I was thinking of doing the 1/2.

Someone asked me last night if I was from the Chicago area, and nope I am a California girl born and raised but now live in Southern Utah I have never been to Chicago other than the airport for a layover.

YAHH party at Happy's house next year!! After we cheer on Nhmommy!

o.k so I never did figure out the tracking on the web site, so Leanyjoan if yours offers it I would love to check it out. The updates from Happy and others was really nice to see how she was doing.

So I am doing really horrible with my eating seems after my cruise vacation I just can not get back on track I am really mad at myself why am I sabotaging my efforts!! I need to plan if I don't plan I don't do well I started today by writing my food down which was good till mid day and totally blew it for lunch then dinner, but I still wrote it down I think that will help if I am just really honest about it.

Life: ok you mad me a little nervous about the hills in Kanab, did you see the actual course? Are you staying there Friday night? My friend is actually going to be in Bryce until Friday evening with a high school group trip so we might be looking at an early drive in Saturday morning ugghh.

I am reading Marathoning for Mortals and loving it, learning a lot about heart rate and training I think I am going to get a heart rate monitor does anyone use theirs to train like monitoring the range you are in etc....