About the Marathon

By the way, the marathon went much better than I thought (or feared) it would (maybe this bodes well for the Rainier climb?). My time was about 4:20. I never even felt any tightness in my IT Band. And while my legs did start to cramp up a bit after the dreaded "Assault on Battery" at mile 15, by slowing down a bit it never progressed to the wrenching-and-stumbling pain that it did at the Cape Cod marathon. For this I should probably thank Michael Quinn, who paced us well throughout the race, and maybe to the massive doses of "NUUN" that I ingested in the last few days before the race.

Once again, I was the only marathoner running in cutoff khaki pants with pleats.

The day's miracle, however, went to the third runner in our group, Peter Newberry, whose training program maxed out with a 12-mile run, fell behind Michael and I at about mile 6, and was pretty much left for dead, but somehow still finished the marathon about an hour after we did. We were standing around the finish area wondering about all the ambulance sirens when Lauren spotted him crossing the finish line. Amazing.