The place was a madhouse! The porta-potty lines were huge and bisected the starting corral area so much that we lined up to the side.
The starting 'gun' was cute....they said ready, set, QUACK from the Alfack duck!

Usually in running races, folks walk to the start, THEN start running. Today, people starting running about 20 yards before the starting mat. I was taken by surprise and the girl right behind me ran right into the back of my heel and managed to pull my shoe off my foot! Thankfully, this was before the timing mat! Picked up a bottle of water from the buckets reserved for finishers and carried it with me....this was the BEST decision of the day as there were only 2 water stops (mile 2 and the turn-around).

I walked up the bridge the first time and I guess I powered down as mile 2 was my fastest split. Felt really good until the turn-around when I was praying that there was some gator-aid on the course. Unfortunately, there was only water. I re-filled my water bottle at the turn-around and the girl standing there cheering said something like "congratulations...you've won a prize: you get to do it all over again!" I kept a decent pace but was slowing down a little bit as each mile passed; then I thought of Jeff doing his first 100 mile run today and was ashamed of myself for walking and started running again.

Met a cool girl named Crystal who has lost 97 pounds and was just featured in a newspaper article. It was cool to bond with another big loser and I offered some unsolicited advice on dealing with the backslide. She's planning to speedwalk the Disney Marathon in January and is doing M&M this month.

My downfall was the last walk break before walking up the bridge, then walking up the long hill up Cleveland St. Ah well. I still beat my time on the course in 2007 by about 8 minutes. :)

Collected my medal and found out (as expected) that there were no race shirts left...too bad they were so cute. Looked around for anyone I might know, but recognized nobody. Munched on some fruit and left.