Quintiles Marathon at Wrightsville Beach

Things I hate about races:

- People cheering, saying you look great when clearly you're beat down and your race is over.

- Girl power. Unless it's an all chick race, I don't want to hear "GO GIRL!"

- Race directors with a megaphone.

- Phrases like, "Well, at least you finished. I mean, that's huge."

All of these chapped my rear end this morning. I knew I wasn't going to have a pretty race. Aside from being in the midst of a deployment work up, which allows for no training time, I'm also straight off two weeks in the field. However, like Pat told me, when has lack of training ever kept me from being stupid.

I held 7-min pace all the way to mile 16. Then the quads, which were now cramping badly, finally had enough. I was able to gut it out to mile 21 where I promptly headed to my car, wounded pride in tow.

No big deal, though. Like I said, lack of training, I knew it was going to be stupid, and when have I ever done well in a marathon. Expectations weren't that real high to begin. Local 5k this weekend. Party.

Run hard.

Run for Ray 13.1

For my birthday I convinced my roomates to run in a half marathon. We showed up to the start a half hour early only to find that the directors had moved the race 30 miles south. Fortunately, they also pushed the start time back two hours. So after we registered, we air guitared in the parking lot until the gun went off.

I ran 1:36 and grabbed third overall. I was fighting for first until the last lap (3 laps total) and then the legs just didn't have any more in them. I fell twice pretty hard, but no permanent damage. Just tuck and roll, baby.

Trail running is still relatively new for me, so I don't know how fast 1:36 is really. But I did get to meet Tony Hawk. Apparently he lives in the area and the race director knew him. So he and his wife were there signing skateboards. Quintiles Marathon at Wrightsville Beach, March 21st.

Run hard.