Another marathon successfully conquered, making a grand total of four so far, and the second time for this one!And what a great marathon it was! There were 41 of us running the full marathon, with about 160 doing the half-marathon and a couple hundred the 10K.We full marathoners were taken by big old yellow school bus at 6:15 am nearly 20 miles up the south side of the lake to a spot on the road deemed 26.2 miles from the finish line which we could see tantalizingly close just across the lake to the north, and bang off we went! The bulk of the run was at or near water level and what an awesome view that was! For most of the way we ran through or by apple orchards and grape vines, so close that I was unable to resist the temptation to sample the produce. What I sampled would in no way detract from the growers' profits for the year, as I picked them up off the ground where they had fallen and would not have been harvested for sale. Delicious!
We stayed the previous night at the gorgeous Best Western Motel actually at mile 16 on the route, where Mom waited to greet me, along with a troop of enthusiastic Boy Scouts, before she drove off to the finish line to be there in the event I actually made it that far!!! As usual, most everyone was ahead of me, but I did catch up to one fellow, who, it turned out, wasn't even a runner but a volunteer walking up to work at one of the aid stations handing drinks to the marathoners going by. You know, I was tempted to throw my race number in the ditch and join him there! But I resisted by repeating over and over how much fun this was, and kept on running!
The aid stations were manned by various groups, like the Boy Scouts shown above, and these two serious actors dressed up to add color to the event. Towards the end the stations were still there but mostly un-manned given that the volunteers had been there since early morning and now about 5 hours later, they had retired. The drinks and cookies were still there and much appreciated!I kinda got carried away at first with the challenge of keeping up with the pack until I noticed that I was breathing really hard, so I wised up and slowed down. I was able to get my breath back and got started on my 'run-half-a-mile/walk-a-tenth' cadence, which kept me going just fine until about 18 miles, when my feet and legs refused to switch back to 'run'. For the rest of the way, it was 'walk-two-steps/walk-another-two-steps/and-another-two-steps!' That did the trick as I made it across the finish line in only 5 hrs and 35 minutes, but still vertical!
This run kinda convinced me that I'm able to run the first half of marathons quite nicely, but that somewhere early in the second half my legs and feet give out and make life miserable, so why not just be satisfied with half-marathons? The glory is practically the same, as most folks are sufficiently impressed with a guy my age (or most any age!) running 13.1 miles, and the finisher medals are usually the same except for a swatch of some different color! Maybe with more intensive training I could conquer marathons better, but I'm really not interested in training that much. I'll make it through one more marathon at St George for a grand total of five real marathons to brag about for the rest of my days, and just tally up halfs instead. It seems to me that two half-marathons should equal one whole one, so having run five halves to date means I will be short just ONE half-marathon from my goal of eight marathons! 
The last three of us to finish the marathon were all over seventy. I was the second last having just barely crossed the finish line before a really phenomenal Bob Dolphin, to my right, who a couple days short of his 80th birthday, just completed his 451st marathon, all within the last twenty years! The fellow who finished just before me was 78 year old Mel Preddy for whom this was marathon number 364! More power to them! I'm content to just have my picture taken with them! So, I have yet another Finisher Medal, and a nice Age Group Second Place. My wall really jangles now as I walk by! And I don't even think of the hurt they cost me, just the glory! What a great way to cure a post-mid-life crisis! (I was gonna call it a life's end crisis but that sounds a little too scary!)
No comments:
Post a Comment