The Mueller Marathon: Sometimes Family Can Be Your Worst Enemy

June 8, 2019...the date the Mueller marathon tried to take me down. Make no mistake about it, sometimes your family comes down on you the hardest. If I was hoping for a break because I'm a Mueller, I was being naive.

This is us before we realized what
we'd gotten ourselves into.

Maybe it was just trying to teach me a lesson because I decided to make my first trail run ever a marathon. Maybe it just was giving me some tough love. Whatever it was, I got no warm fuzzies from the Mueller Marathon in Divide, CO. Starting at 9000 feet above sea level, with an elevation gain of 4000 -5000 feet (to about 14,000 feet) it was a true test of family loyalty.  Had it not been for Bethany who also naively agreed to run this with me, I would have left the family, disowned my name. Whatever I had to do to get away from this torture.

Me trying to make it up a hill. They all started
to look the same. So, so many of them.

The inclines were so steep. Too steep to run. We basically used the the ground to claw our way up them. So we figured, well, at least we can run the downhills.  Nope. Also steep..to the point where we worried we would pummel down the hillside.  So ultimately a lot of walking.

Don't get me wrong, the course was beautiful, making its way through Mueller State Park. But we should have known this race would be ridiculously hard since a normal marathon cut off time is about 6 hours. This race..well, they were kind enough to give us 9 hours to finish.

We quickly developed a love/hate relationship with one another. True of many family relationships, right? Bethany was cursing my name. Actually we were both cursing a lot of things. (Apologies to the families with small children we accidentally happened upon during our arduous trek).

Bethany and I finished at a solid 7 1/2 hours. We were just thankful to have made it in less than 9 hours, since there were many times we weren't so sure that was going to happen.

But we did it, and now I have a medal with my name on it. No inscription fee needed! And of course a cool race tshirt with my name. I'm sure Bethany will still curse my name whenever she sees that medal or wears that shirt. She may never forgive me...

Now for the pre and post-race highlights...

I arrived a few days before the race to "try" and adjust a bit to the altitude. I met up with my friend Nicole and her 2 super cool kids in downtown Golden.

I love having a chance to get to know the cool little humans my friend's kids start to turn into as they get older. And hopefully I didn't scar either her son or daughter with my tales of horrible first dates. But Jack is already leaps and bounds ahead in the chivalry department, prepared to treat a future lucky lady to dinner.  I also squeezed in a dinner with another college friend, Ami; as always, we had a great time catching up. Aaaaaand, I also had lunch with a friend from a prior job, Megan, who I quickly realized was pregnant, exciting news I was unaware of! As I write this, she is a new mom to this little peanut who arrived just days ago. Congrats and can't wait to meet him during my next visit!



Megan suggested a nice course for a little practice run. And I thought this hill was going to be hard. So beautiful though!






My race squad arrived a day after I did, and we of course, did a little sightseeing / hiking before the race in the nearby aptly named Garden of the Gods.

And when you travel with your race squad, you buy squad t-shirts.

#squadgoals

We also enjoyed some pre-race hot springs. Well, I might have gone back without my squad pos- race while they were road tripping back to the midwest.

The view from the barrel of hot mineral water. 

Lady date in the hot tub?

In all seriousness, I would have never finished this race without Bethany pushing me to keep climbing. And that badass was using this as training for the Madison, WI Ironman, which she finished just last month (September)! And Gillian was a great addition to the race squad, bringing me ice for my ankle, running out to pick up pizza. Love both you ladies from 9000 to 14,000 feet and back!

Checking #34 and the state of Colorado off the list! Slowly but surely, making my way to 50. Up next, Mo' Cowbell in St. Charles, Missouri, joined by my race squad Bethany and Sangeeta this time around! Stay tuned for that blog.