Warning: Lame Mastercard Parody Below

This is me with my friends Jenne and Sean at the start of the San Diego marathon. In a nut shell this summarizes my experience -

High stability Brooks running shoes: $120

Gu Energy Gel: $1.00/pack

Cute blue running outfit: $50

Registration fees: $65

Beating your goal time by almost 9 minutes and not vomiting: PRICELESS

The long version is that the marathon was amazing and I had a blast. I barely slept the night before. In addition to being nervous, there is a rowdy bar on the same street as our condo. Obviously, when you are not drunk and trying to sleep, drunk people are really loud and annoying. Anyway, the 3 hours of sleep I got did not seem to matter all that much because at 3am I was too nervous to feel sleepy. The marathon started at 6:35am. Jenne, Sean and I were all in the 7th corral so we crossed the start a little after 6:40am. The first 10K of the race was really annoying. This marathon has over 20,000 participants so the course was packed and it was really hard to run at my desired pace without having to zigzag around slow people that lied about their projected finish time to get into an earlier corral. Fortunately, around mile 7 a long gradual hill began. Thanks to my dad and his desire to take me running on the steepest, longest hills he can find every time I visit Oregon I love running hills. So when people starting dropping off I picked up my pace and was able to break free of the ridiculous crowds by mile 8. This improved my pace considerably. Miles 8-20 just seemed to float by, the course was beautiful and I was actually having fun. I think I had a smile on my face the whole time until mile 23. If I did hit "the wall" it was during the last 5K, which felt longer than the previous 23.1 miles. I began counting down the tenths of mile but my pace never slowed. Finally, about a 1/2 mile from the end I saw my friend Sean in the shoot. I got excited that we were both going to finish in under 4 hours, and that gave me the extra push to actually sprint (or do my best impersonation of a sprint after almost 26 miles) to the finish. My official time was 3:51:08!

A few side notes about the San Diego marathon, there are several stunt runners here, including the running Elvises, the guy shown above a.k.a Coatman who has been featured in Runner's World magazine, a bunch of people dressed as Superman and Wonder Woman, and a guy dressed as a keg. He was my favorite. It is hard enough running a marathon in comfortable clothes, I can't imagine tyring to do it in a costume.Here Jenne and I after the marathon enjoying some well deserved beer. After finishing that beer, I took a 3 hour nap and then we walked to The Field, which is a much adored Irish pub that I wish was in Tucson. Brian introduced me to this place when Marsha, Brian and I went to San Diego for the Radiohead concert. They probably have the best Guinness outside of Ireland and the ambiance is added to by the Irish accents of most of the service staff and the live Irish dancing. Anyway, I had a Guinness (of course), a cheeseburger, and curry fries; a meal that elevated my whole marathon experience from great to perfect.