The 2008 Five Points of Life Gainesville Marathon was held on Sunday February 24th. As with last year and the year before that, I basically focused a year’s worth of training towards running this particular marathon. Basically 2005, 2006, and 2007 through now have been a slow but gradual increase in weekly running volume because I believe the major limiting factor for a recreational marathoner like me is long distance running endurance.
When I say “long distance running endurance” with respect to the marathon race, it’s really a combination of a few different factors: aerobic conditioning/cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance, and fuel efficiency. These three factors can be improved a bunch by just running a lot and running far. A lot of marathoners fear “hitting the wall” where they run too low on glycogen stores thus leading to low blood sugar, but with the rise of sports drinks and energy gels, I believe a lot of marathoners can take in enough calories to avoid this classic low glycogen “bonk”. On the other hand, many marathoners, especially because there are so many more first-timers and novice marathoners, don’t condition their bodies enough to handle the pounding involved in running so long and so far on primarily pavement. You need strong muscles, tendons, joints, and bones to race a marathon. I believe that the best way to improve in this area to accumulate higher mileage and run far so your body says, “Okay stupid, we’re going to try and build you up enough that you don’t fall apart.” It’s also something you can’t do rapidly but takes years. If you try to undergo a crash training program, you will usually end up becoming a classic case of “too much, too soon” which just means you tried to increase your training faster than your body could adapt to it.
Anyhow, my peak weekly mileage has increased over the last three marathon cycles from 62 miles per week (mpw) for the 2006 race, to 72 mpw for 2007, and 77 mpw for 2008. Doing this was a slow and steady project but worthwhile. In distance running being consistent is important for improving; you simply can’t get any better when you’re sitting on the couch injured half the time. One side effect of building up to this kind of weekly mileage was that I haven’t suffered a running related injury in a long time. Get enough runners together and oftentimes the talk turns to what hurts or what injury somebody has. Everybody thinks running a lot leads to injury, but the key is to run a lot without running TOO much! To do this, I’ve built up weekly volume very gradually as well as cutting back when I feel like I’m getting too fatigued, regardless of whatever training I had planned for the week ahead.
Another thing that some people don’t realize is that they don’t just train 12, 16, 18, or however many weeks for a marathon, but they’ve spent their entire life training for it! If you spent your whole life keeping fit and healthy, then you are ahead of the person who sat on the sofa their entire life even if both of you decided to start training for a marathon at the same time! So instead of being “serious” about this marathon for the last year, it’s really been three years of focused training building up to this race!
Since it’s always easier to remember the bad stuff that happens, here are a few bad things that happened before this marathon. On the 2nd day of my taper, I ran in the rain and had a nice slip and fall onto the road but managed to escape with merely a few scrapes and a tight right leg for a few days. Then a week later I was running late at night and was attacked by a Krispy Kreme donut. To be more precise, I had a Krispy Kreme donut thrown at me by a passenger in a passing car. I didn’t realize what had happened for a couple of seconds whereupon for some reason I reached down to pick up the donut and started sprinting after the car probably setting a new 400m PR! Luckily I didn’t pull a muscle sprinting, so no harm done other than wasting a perfectly good Krispy Kreme (a crime deserving punishment by 100 lashes of a bamboo cane in my humble opinion).
The Five Points of Life Race Weekend is run by LifeSouth which is a regional blood bank in the southeastern United States and headquartered in Gainesville, Florida. The goal of the Five Points of Life program is to raise awareness of the need for donations of: 1) whole blood, 2) apheresis, 3) bone marrow, 4) organs and tissue, and 5) umbilical cord blood. They have a cycling team that rides across the country stopping here and there to publicize the need for these life-saving donations, and a few years ago they thought about having a marathon to do the same. The event started as a marathon and half-marathon run at the same time on Sunday but has now grown to include a kid’s marathon and 5k on Saturday.
The kid’s marathon involves kids from kindergarten to 8th grade who run and keep track of their mileage at school. They complete a total of 25 miles before race day and then get to run the last 1.2 miles of their marathon at the kid’s marathon. They even get a marathon medal at the end of the race! This event was held at 3 PM on Saturday afternoon and was incredibly fun to watch! The kids loved it, and it seemed the adults enjoyed it just as much, at least I know I did! Over 500 kids participated, so it really is a great program to encourage kids to run and stay active.
For people not interested in running a marathon or even a half-marathon, a 5k was added to the schedule of events this year and would be at 4 PM on Saturday after the kid’s marathon. LifeSouth came to my running club (the world famous Florida Track Club, go team!) and asked if we would be interested in handling the timing and results. Being that this race weekend was shaping up to be one of the biggest running events in Gainesville, our club’s board of directors agreed to it once I and another member (Dawn Marie) said we’d be the race directors on the club’s side of things. So we had to set up the mile markers, a couple of water stations, the finish line area, and make sure the timing and results got done. Well, as anybody who has been a race director knows, the work is rewarding BUT it can be a LOT of work and somewhat stressful as well!
The upshot of it all is that I spent part of Friday night loading up trucks with equipment and then over seven hours on Saturday on my feet making sure the 5k race went off without too many problems. Many thanks to my partners in crime: Dawn Marie (co-RD), Tom (our club’s president), and Don (our vice-pres); without their help the 5k wouldn’t have happened. The race did bring its share of unforeseen headaches. The water and Gatorade coolers we had set up for the 5k runners were finished off by all the kid’s marathon runners. On top of that, when some coolers were refilled at a spigot off-site, the police who were in charge of roadway closures wouldn’t let us drive back to the finish area without an official personnel badge! Additionally, we use an old-fashioned race number pull-tag finishing system for results, and we had to deal with a fairly large number of not just race bandits but people who tore off the pull tag which clearly states “Do not remove tag”! What I want to know is how many of these people left the “Do not remove under penalty of law except by consumer” tag on their sofa or mattress but removed the “Do not remove” pull-tag from their race number!
All this stress and time on my feet are not what I would consider ideal marathon prep the day before the race! I would prefer to get my race number and chip, circulate and shop a little at the expo, visit with friends, and then chill out with some reading or music for the rest of the day. My feet were actually a little sore after being on my feet all day. I did manage buy some running shorts at 50% discount but didn’t have time to look through the FunnerRunner stock of fun tech shirts (only $10!!!). Anyhow, after all the excitement, I had some dinner and visited with my parents for a little while. My mom and I made plans for her to watch me finish the race and go out to lunch after the awards ceremony the next day.
I tried to get as much sleep as possible, but only managed about 3 or 4 hours which I guess is par for the course. I got up around 5:15 AM for a 7 AM start. Early morning breakfast was a bagel with peanut butter and some Gatorade. I skipped my usual race morning banana because I had been up and ate fairly late the night before.
The marathon race course is basically a figure-eight that starts on the University of Florida (UF) campus, returns to the start at halfway where the half-marathoners finish but the marathoners continue out for a different second half loop. The first half of the course runs through Gainesville and gives you a taste of what the city is like. We started by the Phillips Performing Arts Center, Harn Art Museum, and Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. For some reason, this year the portapotty lines were crazy long. Luckily I work at a building just a quarter mile or so from the start, so I just parked at work and chilled out at my desk and had private access to my own toilet before the race. Those portable toilets are one part of the race experience I can do without! No matter the weather, I can stay indoors until the last minute and then just rush out to the start line. The past two years, the weather was nice and cool around 50 degrees which led to fast times for me. This year the temperature was 62 degrees at the start and the forecast was for warmer temps as the sun came up. I just hoped for the best, that the cloud cover would stay in place and shield us from the sun.
When I headed out to the start there was an announcement that it was fifteen minutes until the start which was apparently delayed slightly due to timing mat issues (the race is ChampionChip timed). I walked around staying loose and eventually ran into some running pals (hi West, Linda, Andrea, Christy, Abe) and even Marc, a.k.a. Mutthound, a fellow refugee from the Coolrunning running website who drove up from Orlando to run. Even though the half-marathoners and marathoners started at the same time, I decided to line up fairly close to the front because typically the front of the pack is fairly shallow at this race and there wouldn’t be a lot of people running faster than I planned.
After a booming cannon blast to signal the start, we ran from the UF campus and headed north up SW 34th Street which bounds the western side of UF, then headed west on Newberry Road past tree-lined residential and commercial areas. Being near the start, there was no congestion to run through which was nice. While my training has been pretty good this past year, I didn’t see any big indications that I would be much faster than last year’s 3:14:53 finish. But I definitely felt very strong, so my goal was to finish under 3:15 and feeling better at the end of the race than last year when my legs and feet were totally hammered. I ran about a minute negative split last year, but the soreness and pain after the race was worse than after any other race I had run before. I figured I may not be much faster this year, but I was probably tougher and feeling better at the end would be a nice achieveable goal.
The first mile marker went past, and I clicked the lap button on my watch. The first mile split was 7:16. The time seemed fast, but I knew from some runs late in my taper that my legs were feeling extremely fresh, so it was no big deal. It turns out the big deal was just a few moments later when I looked at my watch again it didn’t show any time whatsoever but instead showed a few random dots. A couple weeks ago on an early morning group run, the watch had freaked out and reset itself to midnight January 1st, but it seemed to work okay afterwards, so I figured it was some freak accident, not a low battery or some other problem. Unfortunately, this time I realized the watch was truly on the fritz. I actually brought a backup watch with me that morning but left it on my desk before heading to the start – why wear two watches and weigh yourself down with the extra weight, right?
Well, I like to say that it’s best to run the marathon by a combination of feel (perceived effort) and the your mile splits. Today would be my chance to run a marathon 100% by feel instead which technically should be good enough. There’s no use wasting mental energy being upset or frustrated by things you can’t control, so tried to push it to the back of my mind and just set myself on enjoying the miles to come.
We headed up north on NW 43rd Street which goes past a number of residential areas. I was surprised to see a number of neighborhood spectators out to watch the morning’s running festivities as in the past the spectators were extremely sparse. While the number of spectators is not high, there always seemed to be a few here and there every few blocks for the first 7 miles or so. The course cut east at NW 16th Boulevard which turns into NW 16th Avenue. Mile 6 and 7 of the route are on this stretch of 16th Avenue which is one of the few hilly areas on Gainesville. These rolling up and down hills are the famed “bacon strip” referenced in John Parker’s cult running novel Once A Runner and were a staple of training runs by many of the great runners who’ve trained in Gainesville like Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter, Jack Bacheler, and a whole slew of other runners who’ve trained here. One of the invited elites in 2006 supposedly asked whose bright idea was it to include those hills on the course! Personally, I like them and none of them are as long or as killer as you might find elsewhere which ain’t a surprise considering Florida is not quite famous for its hills!
At mile 7 we headed south on NW 13th Street which is one of the main roads in town. A few blocks later we turned east onto NW 10th Avenue to run through residential neighborhoods. I caught up with Reagan who is a runner who’s run a lot of marathons and often demos and sells “The Stick” massage tool at race expos. Since my watch was dead, I asked him, “Do you know the time?” to which he cheerfully replied, “It’s morning!” Ha ha! Anyhow, I explained that my watch died and he told me we were about 59 minutes into the race. We had passed the 8 mile marker a little while back, so I figured I was still on pace, it still felt easy, so no problem. We ran past Main Street into the Duck Pond area of town. You can figure out for yourself why it’s called the Duck Pond. It’s a really nice neighborhood with some of the oldest houses still standing in town which is one of my favorite parts of the course.
All along the course there were water and Gatorade stops about every 1.5 to 2 miles or so. Around mile 9, I took my first Espresso Love Gu (extra caffeine!) and ran through a very colorful water stop that seemed to be sponsored by Marvel Comics! They had two balloon archways you ran through and for some reason I thought it was really cool, though right now for the life of me I have no idea why.
As we ran through downtown Gainesville we headed toward the Hippodrome State Theater which is one of the cultural highpoints of Gainesville. Heading east we ran back towards the UF campus where we ran through a tunnel underpass beneath SW 13th Street. At this point the clouds started to clear out and the sun started to beat down on us. On campus we ran past numerous UF landmarks like Century Tower and University Auditorium (which have featured in a number of movies as a double for Ivy League surroundings) as well as running into Ben Hill Griffith Stadium which is the home of Florida Field and the Fighting Gators football team! As we headed toward the southeastern entrance to the stadium some Gator cheerleaders were up early to cheer us on which was much appreciated! Once through the stadium, we ran past the baseball field, dorms, and down Frat row which is a nice curving downhill. Then we traced Museum Road around Lake Alice but didn’t catch any alligators sunning out there. Thanks to Jeff who took the picture above and gave me some encouraging words at this point! Coming back to the start we passed by my workplace and the softball stadium whereupon the half marathoners turned right to finish and marathoners turned left to continue on.
This is the point that in past years it got fairly lonely as the majority of runners were running the half marathon. Surprisingly it seemed like a large number of runners around me took the marathon turn off! The clock at the halfway mark showed 1:35:10 as I ran by it, so I was a bit surprised as my half marathon PR is only 1:34:31. I wasn’t too worried as that was from 2004 and is a soft PR since I’ve only run one half marathon since 2004 (and that was back in 2005). Maybe I would run 3:10 today, after all, I still felt great and the running seemed fairly effortless.
Once we turned off campus, the course runs on a paved path parallel to SW Archer Road which runs between Shands Hospital and the VA but soon transfers to a nice Rails-to-Trails paved trail. Around mile 15 I took my 2nd Gu and was surprised to see an old lab-mate (he got his Ph.D in the lab where I work), Adnan, manning the upcoming aid station and water stop! I don’t run with my glasses, so I didn’t recognize him until I got closer, but he was yelling, “C’mon Mark! Let’s go! You can do it, keep running!” He gave me a water cup and and energy boost from seeing him out there volunteering!
On the Rails-to-Trails it the runners really spread out as the guy in front of me seemed to get farther ahead, and I couldn’t hear anybody behind me. Once the course hit Williston Road the race went from city residential areas to a four lane divided roadway. There are some neighborhoods running off the side of Williston Road, but basically mile 18 through 22 is a fairly deserted stretch of road with mostly police traffic control and the occasional race volunteer and aid station to keep you company. One nice boost was passing a police officer that told me I was in 8th place. Whoopee! That was 2 higher than the 10th place finish I had last year. However, at this point I was no longer in the shade of trees and the clouds had blown away to reveal the sun rising higher into the sky. It started to warm up.
At mile 18, I had thought to myself, “Only 7 more miles. Less than an hour left.” At mile 20, I was thinking, “Even if I slowed to 8 minutes per mile, then I’ll still be done in less than 50 minutes.” It was getting hot, and I was starting to feel tired. The clock at mile 20 said 2:26:something. I struggled to do the math: under 2:30 at 20 miles plus 6 times 7.5 minutes per mile is, uhhh… well 6 times 7 is 42 minutes plus half of 6 is 45 minutes equals… ummm, under 3:15, so we’re still in PR territory? Okay, even 8:00/mile means something around 3:15, so just keep running! This was the point on the course last year that I caught and passed a friend of mine, Matyas, who is typically more than 2 minutes faster than me over 5k. Last year I felt strong and eager to catch as many runners as possible from that point on. This year I could barely see somebody a million miles ahead of me or was it just a mirage but who cares because he/she/it seems to be farther and farther ahead. I want to look behind to see if anybody is catching up, but I’m too tired AND too scared. The next aid station was at mile 22, and since I didn’t want to run out of energy too early by taking in a Gu at mile 20, I held off waiting to hit mile 22 and the aid station waiting there.
I was getting hot and tired. All of a sudden I had a side stitch. I’ve heard of such things before, but I’ve never had the pleasure of having one; in fact, I’ve never had any type of cramps whatsoever in my entire life. So when I’ve seen somebody cramp up or hear about it, I’ve had absolutely no idea what it feels like! The stitch was on the right side, so I grabbed it with my left hand just out of instinct. I kept running but tried to breathe as deeply as possible to relax my diaphragm. It didn’t seize up completely, but I did spend a few miles grunting, groaning, and grabbing my side sporadically.
The people at the mile 22 aid station were absolutely fabulous, a sight for sore eyes, tired body, and fuzzy mind. I took my Gu and water hoping for enough energy to power to the end. Just past the mile 22 marker the course runs north on SW 34th Street past apartments and businesses. It’s one of the biggest roads in town, basically a six lane divided roadway with a concrete median. However, the entire course had been coned off with excellent police traffic control everywhere, so I felt perfectly safe from the passing motorists but not from my own stupidity! I wasn’t weaving back and forth, but I sure felt like I should’ve been! At this point I had a lot of salt buildup on my face and arms, and it was clear that the sun and heat was a totally different animal than the cool conditions the last couple of years. I told myself it was only four miles, in four miles it would be over and I could stop.
At mile 23, the course turns east on SW 35th Place which is lined with many apartment complexes catering to a lot of students. It’s a two lane road, and the entire eastbound lane was coned off for runners. John, a really good runner I’ve run with a few times, drove by the other way in his SUV and shouted, “Go Mark! You look great!” It was terrific to see a friendly face at that low point, but I thought he had to be lying as I felt like crap! Last year I had some muscle soreness and foot pain at this point but was still scooting down the road at a good clip; this year I wasn’t sore at all (except for the side stitch) but just had a general feeling of malaise and why the hell won’t my feet move any faster boy everything seemed so promising a lifetime ago at the halfway point?!?! Historically, the split for mile 24 has always been long whereas mile 25 is short – I’m not sure why but they always average out to a pace that makes sense -- so the one positive about having a busted watch was not knowing how slowly I was going.
Just after mile 24, the course turns onto SW 23rd Terrace, also known as Cow Road because of the UF Beef Teaching Unit that is located there. It’s a 65 acre farm with over 100 cows, and when the temperature and the wind are just right, it smells like cow poo all around there. I know because I used to live on that road! Luckily today it wasn’t ripe at all, but the police have always had runners jump on the concrete sidewalk on the far side of the curvature of the road when the shortest route is actually a bike lane on the inside. It does make for a better close up look at the cows, but let me tell you, that was a tough slog. And at this point one runner ran by me but I had absolutely nothing left in the tank to respond to him. So much for 8th place, but 9th place was still one better than last year.
Some friends from the Florida Track Club planned to have a cheering station right near mile 25. Dawn Marie is the member who has been in charge of FTC efforts to cheer on runners at this race. For three years straight she has gone to represent our club at the race expo, and she’s had materials for people to make signs for runners to see which she plants on the course early in the morning. So THANK YOU to Dawn Marie for all her efforts! She has also been in charge of getting volunteers to cheer at mile 25, and it was GREAT to see some friendly faces after that long slog. My friend and running pal Jennifer said she would be out there, and since she had been healing up from a serious stress fracture, I hadn’t seen her as much and was looking forward to catching her out on the course. She had recently been the recipient of a special gift from another good runner (Tom): a cowbell for cheering on runners. So needless to say, I was looking forward to and, at that point, in dire need of some cowbell! I was extremely happy to see and hear all the people out there cheering for me! Thanks to Dawn, her husband (Rob) and kids (Shauna and Spencer – so cute!), Jennifer, and Don for the encouragement! I remember specifically Jennifer telling me, “Go Mark! You look so good!” and Don, who seemed really excited, came running up to me and yelled, “You’re 8th man!” I was just putting one foot in front of the other at that point and told everybody, “I don’t FEEL good. I think I hit the wall.” I wanted to high-five the kids but at that point they probably would’ve knocked me backwards. Dawn Marie shooed me away with, “Don’t talk! GO!!!” which was the energy-saving kick in the butt I needed -- not that I sped up any, just that it kept me moving forwards instead of stopping dead still!
Anyhow, after mile 25, the course crosses busy Archer Road to the southern boarder of the UF campus. Running along the sidewalk here, a compact woman runner passes me, and she looks strong, her legs just moving back and forth metronomically. Then some curly haired guy runs up to her, and for some reason he didn’t look like he was in the race, but he seemed to be pacing her at that point as they ran together stuck at the hip in front of me. We headed onto campus through a small tree lined road named Surge Road but there weren’t any surges left in my legs. It’s a curvy road, snaking back and forth. At this point I ran into another FTC member, Art, who took my picture and told me I was looking good, whereupon I immediately feel my right hamstring seize up! As I’ve said, I’ve NEVER had a cramp in my entire life, but NOW I know what it is like. I shuffled a couple of steps then stopped still for fear of having it lock up completely. I grabbed the affected hammy and squeezed it with both hands. Then I thought, “Keep moving ahead but not too fast” and it seemed to loosen up enough to run/shuffle again.
Having run this race the first two years, I knew it wasn’t very far to the finish. After passing the entomology department, Surge Road runs inbetween a large experimental agricultural field and an experimental citrus orchard. It’s kinda nice since orange trees are very Florida, and the field has all kinds of crops like corn, sorghum, peanuts, what-have-you growing there. Right at the mile 26 marker the last 385 yards goes west on Hull Road towards the starting point. This stretch of road is very familiar to me as usually run on it 4 or 5 times a week during my daily run. It’s a very slight uphill incline to the finish, and then a sharp dogleg turn left into the parking lot where the finish line awaits. Maybe 50 yards from the turn, my mom pops out from the side wearing her trademark hat and yells, “C’mon Mark! Come on! Run!” and starts running right beside me. I only live a mile away from my parents and see them all the time, but it was still very exciting and I can truthfully say that I was happier to see my mom than the finish line.
The very last trauma of the day was that after making the turn left onto the last 50 feet or so of the course, there was a sign standing in the middle of the road! People started yelling, “Go to the right! Go to the right!” At this point in the race, I was totally confused and all I could think was, “What are these crazy people talking about, go to the right… they’re crazy!” But then when I came up right to the sign I saw it read “Half marathon” with an arrow pointing to the left and “Marathon” with an arrow pointing to the right! Ohhh… I crossed over to the right just after the sign to run over the timing mats set up for the marathoners instead of running over the timing mats on the left for half marathoners. I looked up at the clock: 3:17:48.
The finish line area was terrific with great volunteers and medical staff. They were very efficient in clipping off my ChampionChip timing chip and asking if I needed water. After collecting my medal, I talked with my mom and ran into a good running pal, West and his wife Fran. The race organizers did a great job of getting some fantastic food donated at the finish ranging from the traditional bottled water, bananas, and bagels (Publix) to cheese pizza (Domino’s), ice cream (Ben & Jerry’s), coffee (Starbucks), and one of my favorites, those day-glo orange crackers and peanut butter snacks! The race awards were very nice imprinted backpacks for the top 5 men and top 5 women along with some nice cash awards ranging from $900 for 1st place to $150 for 5th place. Age groupers won slightly less glitzy but still very nice imprinted drawstring backpacks – a very nice alternative to the typical shiny plastic trophies! I was 10th overall, 8th male, and 1st in my age group AGAIN like last year! If that sounds like a complaint, believe me it’s not! I feel it is mostly luck when I am able to place that well because faster runners didn’t show up to run on that particular morning at that particular race. My hats off to Brite and Mary Kate, the race directors from LifeSouth who did a great job!
Unlike 2007 where I ran a negative split of a minute faster for the 2nd half versus the 1st half, this year turned into a huge seven and a half minute positive split for the 2nd half. It had all seemed so promising at halfway in just over 1:35, making 3:10 or a PR at the very least look so doable. Unfortunately, since my watch died barely a mile into the race, I don’t have a ton of mile splits with which to analyze my race. The official results have a few splits: halfway – 1:35:07 (7:16/mile), 20 mile – 2:26:55 (7:21/mile), finish – 3:17:48 (7:33/mile), net/chip time – 3:17:38. So there was an inexorable slowdown involved. The funny thing is that I was still on pace for a PR through 20 miles, but the last 6.22 miles left were run in just under 51 minutes (50:53) for an average pace of 8:11/mile. The other bad thing I notice is that I slowed between halfway and mile 20, whereas the last couple of years that was a really good stretch of running for me where I typically ran a pace faster than my average overall race pace.
One confounding factor is the weather. While online weather resources seem to show that it only went from about 62 to 66 degrees from 7 AM to 10 AM, it definitely felt hotter than 66 degrees at the finish. That wasn’t just my observation but that of other people as well. Most of the course up to mile 18 has some shade, whereas once the course hits Williston Road at mile 18, there is very little to no shade. The direct sunlight seemed to make a big difference, and at the end of the race I was caked with salt all over my face and arms from dried sweat. When I look at the results, I see the majority of marathoners had positive splits, but a few still ran very evenly paced splits like the woman who passed me at mile 25. And if you look at marathons in general, the majority of people run positive splits, so I’m not sure how much of it was due to the weather versus going out too fast.
I’m not sure if I could’ve had a PR if I’d held back more on the first half. On one hand, I didn’t feel that 3:10 was an unreasonable possibility. On the other hand, maybe it really was too fast and I crashed at the end. I really wish my watch hadn’t died so I could see just how my mile splits went over the course of the race.
I will also re-examine my race day nutrition. Last year at the finish I could hardly stand up. In fact, I even told the medical guy at the finish I wanted to lie down, but he told me not to and instead to keep walking. Then my legs and feet were sore and in pain which lasted a few days. This year I really wasn’t much sore, the only thing that had me walking a little funny was a blister on my foot! Near the end, I just had the feeling that I couldn’t generate enough energy to move my legs any faster. After the race, my mom got me some water, and after pouring it in me and on me, along with eating a banana, I felt so much better. In fact, I could’ve done some running today whereas last year it was impossible. That leads me to think maybe energy usage and glycogen sparing through nutritional intake could’ve helped stave off the slow down.
All things considered, I still had a very good time – by which I mean an enjoyable time! It was a lot of fun to run into so many people and talk with them before, during, and after the race! And just to end on a food note, here is what I ate after the race: 2 bottles of water, one small scoop of ice cream, one banana, half a slice of cheese pizza, 2 peanut butter crackers, and to top it all off, I had lunch at Cedar River Sea Food: a big ol’ glass of sweet tea and the lunch order of fried oysters with steak fries and fried okra!
Two of my running friends, West and Ozzy, ran the Space Coast Marathon and Half Marathon in Cocoa, FL in 2007. It was Ozzy’s debut marathon, and from what they told me, it sounded like fun. They were planning to make a repeat appearance at the Space Coast to run the HM (which stands for “Half Marathon” for those of you who don’t know the runner lingo) in 2008. Since I usually run with these guys once or twice a week, they tried to convince me to make the trip with them. While West was going with his wife, Ozzy was going by himself, yet still made a hotel reservation for a room with two beds, so I guess they figured I could be talked into it somehow! Anyhow, race day was November 30th, which was a scant 28 days since I ran the C&D Marathon. After taking a couple weeks off without running – I actually only planned to take one week off but that’s how it turned out – I was still feeling a little off my game running-wise. For some reason my legs would feel sore after distance running, a sure sign that the damage I took from pounding out a marathon hadn’t totally healed up yet. I probably wouldn’t be able to race to the best of my abilities.
It is a nice coincidence that the title of this blog post, "Great Expectations" pulled up the movie poster to the Gwyneth Paltrow movie adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel. Well, I am mainly tickled by the coincidence because Gwyneth looks so cute on the poster... 8^)
Some people like cold breakfast cereal -- as a bachelor, I love it! It makes for a quick breakfast in the morning when you're trying to get out the door as quick as possible, and it is also a quick and nutritious midnight snack as well. In fact, I can eat breakfast cereal any time of the day. 
