Marathon Summary

The marathon went well, I experienced a whole new level of pain and I think that is probably the last marathon I'll be doing. At least until I forget how much I hurt the next day! I feel pretty good today though, at least I am up and walking around. The first 6 miles of the race were really good, I felt like it was just another run. I was hitting my pace perfectly and nothing hurt. Miles 7-10 were pretty good, but I had to make an emergency pit stop at a porta potty....My stomach bug attacked again. Miles 10 through 14 were just OK, I had some cramping in my left calf and by that point lots of muscles were just starting to hurt. Miles 14-about 20 were the only part of the course that I had not seen, that was a BIG mistake cause they were all straight up (nearly 1000 feet of elevation gain!) and then straight down (especially mile 14-17, I called it "hell on earth"). Bridget's sister Melissa joined me at mile 16 and ran the rest of the way with me, that was a big surprise cause she was only planning to run 2 or 3 miles with me. Bridget met me at mile 10 on her bike and rode with me, but she crashed at the finish line and missed me crossing it! That's why you shouldn't ride and talk on your cell phone! She was doing 2 miles an hour though so she didn't get hurt. Miles 20 - 26 were very interesting, I'd go from hurting so much that I didn't want to take another step to getting a big adrenaline rush and feeling like I was on cloud 9 with no pain at all. I've never had that happen before, but it was kinda cool.

So here are the stats, although keep in mind that the goal was to finish this one...not set any records. I did throw away my time goals because I had such a hard time calculating everything. So I finished in 5 hours 15 minutes 54 seconds, 319th place out of 384 that finished the race. There were 6 people who started the race but did not finish, and one person who had an error in their timing since their time is at 33 hours +. There were also 47 people who signed up for the race and then didn't do it (I was close to being one of those people about 2 months ago)! My minutes per mile average was 12:02, fastest mile was about 9:56 and slowest was 14:31.

And Oh yeah, my nipple got rubbed off and I had a big bloody spot on my shirt! At least I didn't notice till someone pointed it out at the finish line.

Best moment for me was at mile 20 Bridget's parents were there cheering and Sydney ran along side of me for 20 or 30 feet, I picked her up and gave her a big hug!