Well, this was my second marathon on the tail end of a really great summer. I trained my rear-end off starting in, oh, I guess April for the triathlon season. I fully expected all of the training to build into shattering last year's marathon finish. So here's how it went:

Alarm blaring at 4am and not a cloud in the sky…nuthin' but stars. Uh oh, this could get to be an ugly day. We made our way downtown, seeded ourselves according to the pace signs and waited for the shuffle/waddle start among 9,000 runners on 4th at City Hall.

For the first few miles, I thought it was strange that my heart rate wouldn't go below 150 when I usually spend the first few miles of my long runs in 130's!! Uh oh, gonna be a lllooonnnggg day at this rate. By 45 mins into the race, the sun was beating down on us…well, as "beating down" as the sun can at this latitude. 10 miles in my heart rate reached the 160s but I felt very smooth, relaxed and not breathing hard…actually breathing through my nose at times. By mile 17 (at the St. John's Bridge climb) I felt good enough to actually keep a really high cadence up the hill, over the bridge and down the other side.

Mile 22 things started to get…well…interesting. Heart rate nearing 170. At this point, I start thinking to myself, "you've built through the first ¾ of the race, you can gut this bad boy out and take home PR that shatters last years marathon." At this point, I was burning up…temp in the high 80's. Not hot for Houston, but when your training runs have, for the entire summer, been in cloudy and cool conditions, high 80's is a scorcher. Up until this point, I was had been holding about a 3:30 pace from the 10k marker and feeling really good.

Disaster struck between mile 23 and 24. After a really long descent, my left hamstring seized in a violent cramp…worse than any cramp I have ever had, including cramps in 100 degree south Texas summer football practices. I was stopped for at least 10 minutes. The cramp wouldn't release and I could walk AT ALL. After massaging that booger, it finally let up to where I could at least walk. After a few hundred yards I finally started running again. Ended up Gallowalking (4 mins run/1 min walk) to the finish line. At mile 22 I had a 3:30 pace going with negative splits up to that point….finished in 4:10. After all of my work this summer and losing a substantial amount of body fat, I was completely demoralized. Not that a 4:10 second marathon is horrible for a slow, fat offensive lineman, but all of my quality workouts leading up to Aluminum Man really had me running well….I thought.

I guess I'll chalk this race up to "I endured some ridiculous pain and still finished before the sun went down." When I was suffering through those cramps, I really wondered if I would ever run another marathon. I still wondered that as I walked around the finish/recovery area waiting for Mamma Gina to bring her race in. By the time I downed an ENORMOUS New York-style slice of pizza, 1/3 of MG's calzone, appetizer and dinner from Outback Steakhouse, I began to plan my Portland Marathon redemption game plan. Uh, probably starts with the marathon in Penticton in May.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Jeff