I was shooting for 5 hrs for my first marathon and through 13, I was running just over 4:30 pace. But I knew that I'd gone out way too fast. So I started taking it a little slower for the next 3 miles. Started cramping around 17 in my back and really felt dehydrated so I stopped to stretch my back by the Washington Monument and my sister came running out of the crowd. She was taking pics to send to my dad on her Iphone so I got some water from her (an entire Nalgene bottle). Which ended-up cramping my stomach pretty good. But I was hydrated. We talked so long, I got passed by the 5hr pace group. So I figured I'd stick with them until I saw three guys from Team Semper Fi (My charity group) and as I watched, one of the two below-the-knee amputees was drifting back from the other two so I ran with him the rest of the way and let the other two take a little faster pace. We all linked-up at the 20 mile mark and ran together to the end which was awesome. They kept a 12-min pace almost exclusively, stopping to stretch, never walking. As we ran through crowds, they would stop cheering and just watch as these two guys ran past with their Cheetah prosteses. They really had a hard-time running up hills but they kept moving-right-along. The guy I ran with most, Eric "Goo" was a Truck driver who jumped-down from his truck in Afghanistan and walked-back to check on the stuff loaded on his truck when he stepped on an italian-made toe-popper mine. The sound those make is not an explosion, it's more of a thud so he lay there until the convoy started to roll when his a-driver noticed he wasn't back and jumped down to check on him. He lost his lower-leg, but is by far not broken by it. The other guy was Lazko. He was wounded in an IED attack before the vehicles were hardened like they are now. He was the only survivor in his vehicle. The guy running with them was a Gunny who lost 70% of his hearing when a grenade went off in the room he ran into. He covered his face with his forearms so he had schrapnel but the hearing loss forced him out of the corps. As we ran to the finish, the crowd was going nuts! It was awesome. We crossed the line and Eric gave me a big bear hug. I think I may have finished in better time if I ran ahead of them, but there was no way I was leaving them at that point. I set a PR (It's my first Marathon), I beat Katie Holmes 5:30 and I finished. I won't forget those two guys and plan on linking up with them in Miami for the Miami International Triathlon.

Start a little slower. But I am still so glad I got to run with Eric, Laz and Gonzalez

LOOONG walk to a taxicab because the Metro line was like 3000 people deep.


Going out too fast probably.


Best marathon I've run (only one I've run). The water stations were fine, but it seemed like they had food stations after the water stations every time so you got your food (Gels and Sportbeans) and then had to wait a mile or more for water. Crowds were large and supportive.