Ok, I wasn't in the greatest mental space.

My wife's been battling breast cancer and two days before the race we got the phone call with the results of her MRI and they weren't good. Two more spots showed up on her chest. We just finished the summer going thru the surgery, radiation bit and thought we were out of the woods. We agreed this weekend would help keep our minds off it until we could get in to see her dr. on Monday. Of course it was an emotional day seeing her along the way and then at the finish line. We both knew I hadn't trained enough, but we were tired of letting this cancer thing stop us from doing what we loved. The plan was for us to run the last 6 miles together but it was a crappy day and she was pretty run down.

Felt great the first 13 miles. It was cold with a headwind and I couldn't gauge how much to drink or eat. There was a small headwind the whole way. I loved the first 13 miles. Then my IT band started to lock up right on schedule at mile 16. Managed to hold an ok pace until mile 20. I hit mile 20 at exactly 4hrs and got a little cocky. I thought I could bust out a 1 hour 12k and come in close to 5 hours. However mile 22 had other plans for me. The wheels totally fell off the cart at mile 22. Cardio wise I felt great but I was getting light headed and my legs and feet killed me. In hindsight I totally didn't drink enough. I only had 1 gel, 1 pack of jelly beans and some water along the course.

Consider how much I trained for this race I'm totally happy.

Eat more, train more. And for the love of pete, drink more along the way.

That night my core was just radiating heat but everytime I took off the covers to cool down I would start shivering uncontrollably. I got up and forced myself to drink water, even though my stomach was still upset. Weird I wonder what that was.

Limp to car....


Me & my skinny little legs.


Will do another marathon for sure, but I'll be better prepared next time.