Round 2

Just a little re-cap for those of you that followed me on my journey for Grandmas Marathon '08: The weather was perfect...It was a cool start to the morning, however, not a cloud in the sky. We knew it was going to heat up nicely as the day went on. However, I didn't anticipated the strength of the suns rays, and I thought I would be ok w/out sun screen. BOY WAS I WRONG! Anyways, Bryan and I met up @ Miller Hill Mall to board the bus..His uncle road w/ us up the north shore... There wasn't much chatter on the bus..as I'm sure that many of us had the pre-race jitters.....We arrived in Two Harbors....de-boarded the bus..and began to walk to the start point....We had to make the pre-race stop at the Biff's...You wouldn't believe how many they have, yet the lines are crazy long! Never the less we finished our "business" and continued on our way to the start point. After a little bit of chatter we began to stretch out...feeling good we fought through the crowd to get ourselves ready for the start. It was a sea of people...everyone jammed next to one and other...Once we were in there, there wasn't any room to stretch out. The National Anthem played and you could feel the rush of adrenaline through every ones bodies. With a loud snap of the starting pistol we were off!

If you read through my posts from last year, you'll see that Bryan and I had a goal time that we wanted to accomplish. We had figured that if we ran a 9 min mile throughout we could finish w/ a sub 4 hour marathon. Not too shabby for a couple of first timers! Well, that was just a pipe dream due to the "GRAND CANYON of CRACKS"! You may chuckle at my commentary on this "Crack" that I stepped in. But truly this thing was ENORMOUS! Lets recap: About a mile into the race (I'm not even sure it was even a mile) the sea of people is still running together. In fact it is so thick w/ runners you can't even see the ground beneath you. You find yourself moving from side to side mearly because that's the way the sea of people is moving. Well it was in the movement from the middle of the road to the left shoulder that I found the "Grand Canyon". I immediately knew that my ankle was jacked up. I stepped into the crack w/ the side of my left foot and immediately rolled my ankle over the top of it. I stumbled and nearly fell flat on my face. You may laugh at the though of this 200lb man falling on his face. However, imagine the anguish this 200+ man had to go through to even get ready for this 26.2 mile event. And then to top it off, have it happen w/in the first mile. Several runners around Bryan and I gasped in horror that a runner was going down....however, I recovered for the mean time. I collected myself and took a deep breath. I knew I was going to have to work hard to survive the remaining 25.2 miles, to save the last 18 weeks of training.

Bryan and I tried to keep a constant pace together..We knew that if we started to fast we would surely burn ourselves out before the finish line...So we kept to our game plan...steady pace, steady pace! The miles kept rolling by..1 mile became 5 miles became 9 miles became the midway point. We checked our watches to find that we were right on track for our sub 4 hour marathon. We decided to stop and use the Biff's that were set up for the starting point for the half marathon...and boy did that turn out to be a bad idea! Once we got back onto the road I felt my left ankle begin to swell up in my shoe..and to make matters worse my right quad was starting to cramp from the favoring of my left ankle. Needless to say the second half didn't go nearly as well as the first had. The worst part of the entire race was that I kept having to walk. It started as only at the water points..then it was every few miles..and then every mile. Because I had to walk so much my running partner started getting knee pain...My Bad B! But we stuck together and finished together like we told each other we would do regardless! We ended up finishing right around 4 hours and 45 min. Now that wasn't our goal, but good work for a bum ankle and a first time marathon! Great work B!

So now we find ourselves at a cross road. Do I run the race again because I didn't get my goal time? Or do I call it quits because damn 26.2 is a long ass way to run? For those of you that know me, you know I couldn't just be done after a poor showing. So today I find myself on day 2 of training for my second marathon! So, this is your invite to follow me on my journey to have the best time ever!

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