Nike Full Marathon 10/18/2009

Even though my finishing time in my last Nike Full Marathon was 30 minutes slower than I had hoped for, it was a good weekend, good day and good race.

I learned several things, among them there are some bodily functions one cannot completely control/predict, and that having black bean soup for lunch Friday, followed by risotto for dinner, then tamales with frijoles refritos on Saturday morning, chili for lunch, and pasta dinner may create a problem. (As John Bingham said in a post-race conversation - "Tom, you are not in your twenties any more, you can't eat like that".) So as you could see from a detailed mileage chart, my time for mile 3 is over 10 minutes too long. Fortunately, there is a McDonalds at that point on the course, which made cleaning up a lot easier than a "blue room" or porta-john, but it was still unpleasant and time consuming.

About two hours after what we can call the "frijoles incident" another "Nike first" occured for me - got a short video clip shot by our friend John Park. Not sure exactly where this was taken but think it was about mile 12 or so based on the traffic. As you can see by then I was just having fun and doing the race.

In the cold light of the days after the race, it looks like a personal record might have still been possible if I'd made up a lot of time in the next 12 miles or so, but that did not happen, so the PR did not happen. I realized there was not going to be a PR by about mile 12, and sort of "cruised" from there to the finish. The good news is I'm OK with that, having decided before the start that my goal was to complete five Nike Full Marathons before my 65th birthday, and that has been accomplished. There will not be another Nike Full for me in the future, I've met my goal.

Not giving up racewalking, going off to a five day Dave McGovern training camp in November. Simply have concluded that the Half Marathon is just as much fun and a lot less taxing on the body.If nothing else doing the Half at next year's Nike will give me the chance to try keeping up with my beautiful wife (who set her own PR doing the Half Marathon this year) and see how the first five or six miles of the course look in the daylight. (I've started at 5:30 each year, so it's not daytime until about six miles into the event.)

Thanks for all your support! Be watching for reports from the Marine Corps Marathon 10K (we do it as a recovery walk) and the racewalking camp. Following those is a "Turkey Trot" with our granddaughter, and the Carribean Cruise Marathon with John Bingham in February, which ends on 2/13/2010, my 65th birthday.

If you are curious about detailed results from Nike, go to http://raceresults.eternaltiming.com/index.cfm/20091018_Nike_Womens_Marathon.htm