In the battle of mind vs. body, body wins.

Actually, in the past six weeks, I would say it's body: 143, brain: 0.

I woke up only slightly dizzy and with pretty clear vision and decided it was time to tell my body how I felt about it's behavior of late: F You, body. I headed to the marathon start. Because seriously: Enough. On Saturday morning I felt good for two hours. Normal. The first two hours in six weeks. It was brief, I walked into a starbucks bathroom, flipped on the fluorescent light and fell down from the vertigo as another wave started. But they were a beautiful two hours!

So I got up, suited up in my lululemon tester outfit, and bummed a ride to the start with Derek, avoiding evil fluorescent light at all costs. I love the start of the marathon. There are 25,000 people lined up, and fireworks are set off with the cannon. I love rainy day runs.. and we're in day 3 of flash flood warnings, so there was plenty of rain. I ran the first few miles at 7:00 pace just to see if perhaps it would be a good day. Then the vertigo started hitting. Every 5 minutes or so, I would get hit hard and have to crouch down and steady myself until it passed. I had a bailout plan - Rams and the kids were waiting in our neighborhood, at mile 15.5. So I slowed down and ran a steady pace to the 13.1 point (1:35) and decided I had two options: Run 3:12 at Honolulu for the third time, because I always run 3:12 at Honolulu, or stop at 15.5, eat and cheer on friends. The vertigo and lack of hearing on one side that hit when I stopped was all the reassurance I needed that I had made the right call.. I really don't need to mess with my health any further for yet another 3:12. But I'm glad I went out and did the fun half of the marathon.

And so, the body wins. Again.

There were so many kind comments - thank you all. I'm OK today, though the computer screen is still difficult to look at. I'm looking out the window as I type. I will figure this out, somehow, someday. Until then I'm going to say no to everything I possibly can say no to, and continue to get second, third opinions from neurologists. I'm managing things the best I can, and so long as I can work and enjoy my kidlets, life goes on. Here we are post-half-mary, at the waterfall behind our house. It's usually a dry gully. Notice there was no F- on my bib.. phew, way less pressure. I hear I was in about 10th place when I bailed out. How appropriate!