Well, I really dropped the ball on this whole blog thing. So now it's January 2010. I guess I should report on the marathon. It went well for the most part. I didn't get my goal time of 3:30 but I ran a 3:48.

The day started out well. We got to the start with time to warm up and meet up with all our friends that were running. The only problem was there weren't enough restrooms so the lines were really long. I waited too long to get into line so when the start time came for the race, I was still in the restroom. Everyone started without me. I had trained with Terry Tuttle and had hoped to run with him but I started 3 minuted behind him and I wasn't going to make that up so I had to just try to keep my pace by myself. I did great through 19 miles but somewhere between mile 19 and mile 20 I looked at my watch and realized I had dropped off my pace. At that point there began a dialogue between my brain and my legs that went something like this:

Brain: "Hey, legs, we've dropped off the pace, we need to pick it up a bit."

Legs: "Yeah, ok, as soon as we get out of this mud bog and to the top of this hill we'll pick it up."

Brain: "But we aren't on a hill and this is asphalt, not mud..."

Legs: "Oh no, you're eyes deceive you, this is definitely a hill and some of the stickiest mud we've ever run through."

So, yeah, I hit the wall. It was amazing how my legs just decided they were done. I ran the first 19 miles in 2:32 and the last 7.2 miles in 1:16. That was 2.5 minutes slower per mile.

As I crossed the finish I kept thinking about the movie Rocky I. At the end of the fight, Apollo Creed just keeps saying, "...there ain't gonna be no re-match...". That's the way I felt at that moment. I could hardly believe it when two days later I heard myself say, "...next time I'll do some things different...".

So I'm not committing to anything but I'm not ruling out the possibility of running another marathon. I'm thinking about maybe the Seattle Rock and Roll or St. George. We'll see...