Nashville’s Country Music Marathon - Darbi’s experience

Wow, what a weekend! After completing my second “half” Country Music Marathon (that’s 13.1 miles, folks!) early Saturday morning, I’m finally able to walk correctly. The beating my feet and legs took a few days ago absolutely will leave its mark for about a week…but through the hundreds of ice packs, countless trips up and down the stairs and lots of resting up, I’m finally not waddling like a penguin anymore.

Saturday, race day, started with an early, 4am home-cooked breakfast consisting of pancakes, yogurt and a banana. Hey now, a girl has got to have energy for later, right? Once we stuffed ourselves silly, we left home around 5am and headed downtown to the start line at West End Avenue right at Centennial Park. Much to our surprise, traffic heading into town was horrible and congested. I guess you can’t expect much when you try to cram over 30,000 runners and their families onto our Nashville interstates all at once. Finally, we made it to our meeting point in time to take our Team Rio group photo (soon to be seen in the next issue of Country Weekly magazine), take a long stretch and head to the start line.

Miles 1 through 5 were fairly easy for us until the rolling hills of Nashville kicked in. Running through the streets of downtown Nashville proved to be a bit difficult for the ‘ole ‘right foot, left foot’ routine after a while. We pushed through and trudged on and soon enough we hit the 11-mile mark! Those final 2.1 miles seemed to be the longest 2.1 miles I have ever ran in my life. They couldn’t come any slower, I promise you! Every bit of it was worth it when I rounded that final turn into our Tennessee Titan’s stadium where the finish line resides every year. It suddenly felt as if my legs and feet had not been running for the past 2 hours…they suddenly kicked in gear and I was sprinting before I knew it. I could see people pointing at me and I could hear people yelling and cheering for me, which truly encouraged me even further.

Crossing that finish line never felt so sweet. The tears came rolling down my face as I crossed under the big archway signifying ‘the end’ for four long months of training, early mornings and aching knees. I soon found my running buddy (this was her very first race ever) who was just a few steps behind me. We hugged and cried together for a few minutes and enjoyed what just happened. Overall, I was the 5,834th female to cross the finish line out of 18,000 entrants and the 1,545th to cross in my age group. I’m not complaining one bit and already can’t wait for next years’ race!