The Philadelphia Marathon.

Well, dear friends, we did it. Sunday was cold and windy, with race start temp at about 38 degrees. We got up at 0530, and had granola and coffee, and dressed for the race. We left home at about 0630, and got to the start right at 0700. It took us about 25 minutes (enough time to scoot to a porta-potty) for our corral to be called, and then we were off. We started nice and smooth, keeping a pace about 10:45.

One of my biggest problems is that I have to pee all the time, and since I’d hydrated well for the race, this was no exception. We had about a 5 minute pee stop at mile 4 for a porta-potty line that didn’t seem to move. But after that it was easy sailing. We followed our nutrition plans, kept our pace right at about 10:45s, slowly cutting off the long pause mile by mile, and finally settled into an 11:05 pace for the full distance.

Physically, this race hurt much less than the Marine Corps marathon last year. We didn’t stand around for two hours before hand. We had our water and calories with us, rather than relying on the course. And I think we were better trained. Certainly, things came together in a positive way for us, and we set personal records with a time of 4:50:38. That’s in improvement of 8:45, or about 20 seconds per mile.

That’s a big accomplishment. Hell, finishing any marathon on your feet is a big accomplishment. I ran 417 training miles, followed by 26.2 on the big day. 443 miles in four months. Lots of marathoners run a lot more than that. I’m not fast enough to train a lot more miles; I just don’t have the time. But my body held up for this race. And the only obvious “injury” from the race didn’t hurt at all during it.

My knee help up, my quads too. And while a few things hurt from time to time, and everything hurt from mile 24 on (as it will), overall this was a good race and I felt strong during it. And then, of course, we had some 6000 calories to replace:

Now I’m going to rest for a long time, people. We’re off to Hong Kong on Wednesday for a few days. I hope to have some good pictures to share.