Marine Corps Marathon

Well at this point I feel like I can say I have some pretty good experience with marathoning. As of today I have completed 11 total and in just over two weeks I will be running another 26.2 (not officially sanctioned, but I feel it is a valid enough run).

This past weekend marked the 34th Marine Corps Marathon and like the past couple years that I ran it, it was a great all around race. On Saturday I went out to the convention center to pick up my race packet and wander around the huge expo for a couple hours, and, like always, it did not disappoint. I spent just under three hours checking out the different booths, talking to people, getting samples and just soaking in the great feeling of being around so many like-minded people.

I realized that it had been a year since my last marathon. In fact, it had been a year since I'd run any more than 11 miles at a time. My training got put on the burner for a couple reasons: one, I just got lazy with running. I really was feeling great with the strength work I was doing, and the shorter hard runs and I couldn't bring myself to get out there for the longer distances. Two, about a month and a half out I had that wonderful knee-meet-car-door- incident that sidelined my running for a good while. So that goal of a 3:30 or faster was out the window, what would be my game plan?

I decided to just go out there and have fun. There were over 30,000 registered runners, and there'd probably be that many or more fans along the course, so, I'd just get out there, enjoy the sights and sounds, embrace the pain, share it with the other runners and just have a good day all around. So that's what I did.

I finished in just over 4 hours which, at this point, I don't really mind it being so slow for how I felt. I had so much fun though. The weather was perfect, the runners looked great and the crowds were so energetic and supportive. I'm really happy that running and marathoning is getting more and more popular, it really is such a great release all around and it's nice to see so many people out there willing to push themselves to such extremes.

The only negative is that today, a couple days after the run, the top of my foot is really bothering me. The Riding With Courage Marathon is coming up quickly and I want to be good and healthy to run that whole thing seeing how it is my event. I think I'll be pretty good, so, I'll just take it easy on the foot and get all the details worked out for this awesome event!

Another great marathon in the books!

Never Stop, GET FIT.
Josh Courage