Well, that's over.

Summary

Number of finishers: 7215
Number of females: 2825
Number of males: 4390
Average time: 04:48:

As for me:

5K Split 35:00
10K Split 1:10:24
13.1 Mile Split 2:34:52
30K Split 3:53:47
20 Mile Split 4:12:21
Finish Time 5:39:48
Pace 12:58

That was awesome.

The heat and the knee killed me. And the fact that the knee kept me from training very well for the past month.

Aches & pains?

1. The knee.
2. My feet are killing me, just generally.
3. One blister on my toe. (I gotta spread the word about those socks!)
4. New shirt and drawers chaffed off some hairs that old stuff hadn't taken care of.
5. Fanny pack buckle dug a hole in my back. I discovered those last three spots when I got in the shower and hit 'em with the water.

6. No blood this time. Band-aids and vaseline took care of that.

7. Sunburn.

It was supposed to cloud up and thunderstorm by 9:00 (the race started at 8:00), but instead, we dealt with warm, sunny and humid-as-hell until 11:00. Then, all-of-a-sudden, it was cloudy. It felt good, but it was too little, too late. I saw a lot of sunstroke victims on the side of the road. All of whom were being professionally (I mean that in the most complimentary way) attended by EMTs.

I noticed that all of them (the runners lying on the side of the road) seemed to be in better physical condition than I.

They announced at the beginning that "Today is not the day to go for a PR!" [Personal Record]

Great. What am I doing here? I figured, even with the bad knee, I had to do better than last year.

Nope.

Well, my wife was happy I survived. [That's a good thing.]

Update: Hey! I kind of like this thing! They knock 19 minutes off my time for being 44 y.o.

Update: One more thought, from the article linked in the next post, there were plenty of spectators sprinkling and hosing us down. Thank you for that.