I did it! I completed 26.2 miles! Some of it was not pretty, but it is finished and in the record books! It was somewhere between mile 20 and 26 (they all sort of blend together in my memory) that I saw someone standing in the crowd with a sign that read, "Hey Stranger! I'm proud of you!" It almost stopped me dead in my tracks.
Before an event like a marathon, there are people who tell you that "you can do it.” After the event I received a lot of "I knew you could do it." But really, I need what we all need. I want someone to be proud of me and say it out loud.