Hello, Wall. Not Nice to Meet You.

You know how you read those stories about nice sweet dogs that suddenly out of nowhere bite someone? For like 12 years or so they're just awesome and docile. Then bam, one day they've had enough and they take out a chunk of the owner's calf.

Sunday's marathon was that dog.

No, actually Sunday's marathon was probably more like the beautiful beach morning that dissolves into a hurricane by noon. I should have seen the devastation coming. But no, I was fooled by the lovely and benign beginning.

Really, I had a great time for those first 13 miles. The cool breeze off White Rock Lake soothed me. The people around me were interesting to listen to. Well, in little spurts of conversation that is; everyone was passing me with no problem so I didn't get to listen to lengthy discussions.

That actually kind of got to me at first, so I fell into pace with a really athletic-looking woman. She was just in sports bra and running shorts, and from the back she looked like a lean, experienced runner. She kind of turned her head to the left and eagerly I leaned in, thinking she was going to say something to me.

She proceeded to Farmer Blow over her shoulder.

I jumped out of the way of her snot and scooted off to the side. Clearly an indication that I should take my own pace and leave the fast running to the serious athletes. So serious that they blow their nose into the very air we mortals choose to breathe.

But like I said, I was happy at the beginning. My time even looked good for me to finish under 4:30! Hooray, suddenly athletic and accomplished Shannon!

Enter the biting dog. Or the hurricane, rather.

Oh the wind. Oh the sun. Oh the pain.

Some time between mile 14 and mile 18, all the shade vanished, a nasty headwind stirred up, and everything went uphill. I started noticing myself scanning the horizon for water stations...frantically. I began to feel my thighs and knees in flashes of burning pain. That little rock on my shoe was no longer a friendly stowaway but in fact an evil boulder hell-bent on sabotaging my performance.

And someone strung fishing line across one of the bridges; people shouted at me to stop so they could untangle it first and I did not even process what they were saying. I could see my dear brother waiting for me under a tree at the Mile 20 marker, and that sight was like an oasis in the desert.

I barreled through the line, snapping it in two and gratefully joined my brother and his buddy. They had come to cheer me on and run with me in that hellish Mile 20, a part of the race they ruefully recalled from their Big D several years prior.

In that next 20 minutes, I went to a very dark place. Mikers and Hans got me to Mile 21, where I think I saw my sweet friends again (they had staked out Mile 9 earlier in an awesome show of support). Dazed, I smiled at their signs and spoke some gibberish to them.

Where was the next water station? I stumbled into one somewhere in the next mile and asked how many there were remaining. The sun was blazing and the little boy offering me Gatorade shrugged. I think that was when I screamed at the ladies behind him.

"OH, COME ON! HOW MANY MORE STATIONS ARE THERE?!" Did they not understand how brutal it was? Did they not know that my legs were slowly rotting away beneath me, that the promise of a water station was the only thing that kept me running from tree shadow to tree shadow at that point?

All of the tactics and mental tricks I'd had planned for those last 6 miles were out the window. Shannon was no longer a part of the game. It was some strange other creature crawling along the streets, squinting into the glaring light and randomly walking without even meaning to. It wasn't a matter of pushing myself or of finding reserves at that point. All I knew was that I could rest when I got back to the fairgrounds, so I had to keep going.

And then I saw that damn ferris wheel. The Star of Texas loomed huge and FAR in the distance as I exited that final neighborhood and turned back out onto city streets. I had to get to that stupid awful wheel, and it taunted me in its hazy farness.

I turned into a tunnel, oh sweet blessed DARK tunnel! If only I could curl into a ball and live there forever! Hidden from the torturing sun, that tunnel is the only thing I recall with any pleasure in those final moments.

If Brendon and my brother hadn't been at the finish line, I would have just walked to it. Heck, I might have just quit. But I knew they would be there and that there would be cameras, and heaven help me if the documentation of this thing, The Finishing, showed me walking across. Many scientists would probably call what I was doing just really ugly walking, but I swear I was running.

And then it was over. Four hours and forty three minutes later, I was done. Mikers and Brendon collected the pieces of Shannon that were scattered about, drove them away from the race, and reassembled her to be cleaned and fed some Amy's Ice Cream back in Austin.

I got my medal, I forgot to pick up my cool Finisher shirt, and I finished. It was extremely hot and windy and hilly, and I had no idea what it would be like to combat these things at miles 21-26. If friends and family hadn't done so much to cheer me on, there's a fair chance I would have never made it to the ferris wheel.

If I'd actually gotten snotted on by that lady in the beginning, I definitely would have quit.

It was rewarding for sure, but I had kinda thought it would turn me into some sort of superhuman athlete. But no, I can't fly, nor do I have a sixpack. In fact, all I have is a weird sunburn, a sense of accomplishment, and some soon-to-be-missing toenails. Not exactly Lance Armstrong material.

Eh. Who cares. That delicious feeling of I did it is still quite satisfying. Probably so much so that I'll never have to do this again.