I came into this run totally respecting the distance and the temperature. Figured I'd just run at a comfortable pace, and not push it. The race started at 5 am, in an effort to beat the heat; and it was still pitch dark. The moon, however, was almost full, and gave off plenty of moonlight. It was very surreal, running a marathon in the light of the moon.

I had bought some Perpetuem from Hammer and was using it for the first time during a race. I had frozen it the night before in a big 16 oz bottle, and was carrying it in a running belt. Even though this was a chip timed race, there was no timing mat at the start of the race, so it effectively wound up being gun time. I didn't realize this until after the race, and probably lost a minute or two off of my time. There were quite a few of the Marathon Maniacs and 50 Staters in attendance for the race.

It started to get hot and humid around mile 22 or so, which was about when I started to slow down. I walked through each water stop after mile 20, and dumped a cup of water over my head at one, which helped considerably to cool off. Kept pushing when I hit the wall and finished in decent shape.

Nothing really. Considering that I didn't sufficiently train for this, I was satisfied.

Hung out and watched others finish the race. Couldn't eat the dried McDonald's hamburgers they had at the finish, so just had a couple of bottles of Gatorade instead. The skull and crossbones finisher's medal was very cool (to go along with the fluorescent orange and yellow tied dyed skull and crossbones long sleeved race t-shirt).


Spending two weeks in Europe from mid to late August, and barely running while I was there.