(I find that writing is cathartic when I have a bad race; so some of this may have been edited out because it is usually raw emotion.  I will try to keep it short since most of us have short attention spans)
It is said that the marathon is all mental. I say it is a symbiotic mesh of mental and physical; one without the other often results in a bad race.  When both of them fail you, you have the type of race I just had.
Without sounding arrogant, I always considered myself a mentally tough person.  I never felt I was particularly the best athlete, but I always felt that my background gave me the mental toughness to succeed in the marathon; which might be why it has always been my favorite athletic challenge.  I can’t swim and biking will result in another ER visit, but running long has always been my sport.   When I needed to be mentally strong because my legs were hurting I had a mental breakdown; the result of 2 years (last 2 weeks in particular) of an emotional seesaw of my always dysfunctional family (parents, not husband).