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I thought running 13.1 miles straight was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life, but boy was I wrong.
Standing for 26.2 hours straight was on a whole other level of difficulty. I’m still not quite sure how I survived this weekend, but I did, and I’m a better person because of it!
You may be wondering why I didn’t blog yesterday, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. But after standing for that long and not sleeping for a single second, I was barely a functioning human being.
And when I say barely functioning, I mean that I was considered legally drunk. And I was so delirious by the end of it all that the only thing I managed to do was get home, change into my pajamas, jump into bed and sleep.
And sleep and sleep and sleep. For 17 hour straight. It was literally the best sleep of my life.
And now that I am awake again, I feel alive and ready to get myself back on track with my diet and exercise routine. I’m ready to tackle this week like a champ.
But first I wanted to share with you all my Dance Marathon experience.
Like I said above, it was easily the hardest thing I ever done in my entire life. I didn’t anticipate that standing for so long was going to be so painful, but it really, really was. And it was also difficult to keep my mind focused on the task at hand when all I could think about was the ache in my legs and the heaviness of my eyelids.
Every hour that passed proved to be more and more challenging.
I was feeling pretty decent in the beginning of the event, though. We stood up at precisely 11:48 a.m. on Saturday morning and prepared ourselves to stand until 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.
I spent the first few hours of Saturday afternoon hanging out with my friends and learning the line dance that they taught us. You can watch the line dance video below, it’s definitely one of my highlights of the weekend, because seeing all 800 dancers come together on the dance floor and do this dance right before we all sat was amazing.
But after the novelty of the first few hours wore off, I found myself counting down the hours until we could sit. I also found myself looking for ways to stay preoccupied. I discovered that eating and staying in motion were the only two things that helped once the pain in my legs began to set in.
And when I say eat, I mean eat EVEYTHING. They fed us every few hours, and I ate everything. I literally couldn’t stop myself because I was always so hungry. I ate some healthy things, like a turkey sub from Subway, a small Caesar salad and pretzels. But I also ate some not so healthy things, like a donut at 8 a.m., a slice of cheese pizza at midnight and a chocolate brownie on Saturday afternoon. But I don’t feel bad about eating any of those things, because the fattening foods are the foods that helped me make it through the event the most.
One of my best friends David even brought me McDonald’s French fries at 4 in the morning on Sunday. After not eating fast food for five weeks, I must admit that the French fries tasted amazing.
But aside from eating, moving around was another key to my standing success. Eight or so hours into the standing marathon was when my feet and legs first began to ache, so the only thing that I could do was keeping moving to take my mind off of the pain.
I danced, I walked, I jumped and I skipped. I did anything to keep myself moving. I felt ridiculous at times, especially when they had a rave hour at 2 a.m. and I danced myself silly, but it was really the only way to keep myself going through out the 26.2 hours.
And lastly, visits from my friends really helped.
It seemed like my friends always knew to visit when my morale was at its lowest, because every person who came to see me really helped me get through the whole thing. I’m so thankful to everyone who came to see me, and I owe you all so much!
All in all, I’d have to say that participating in Dance Marathon was one interesting experience.
I’m happy to say that I made it through, but there were definitely points when I didn’t think that I would. Especially around 8 a.m. on Sunday morning when I was so deliriously tried that I thought I was going to pass out for a moment (that’s of course when I ate my donut).
And I’m also happy to say that I played a part in this philanthropy, because at the end of it all, we raised $713,053.68 for the kids, for Shands Hopsital and for the Children’s Miracle Network of Gainesville, Florida!
It was one experience that I am glad to say that I have lived through, but one that I will be so happy to never have to do again!
And even though I may have eaten terribly during the event, I promise I only took one day off for the kids. I’m back on my diet right this minute and I’ve already run 5 miles this morning!
So here’s to spending the weekend raising money for the kids, and for getting back on track with my diet and exercise as soon as it was all over with!