Hmmm….

OK, here’s what happened. I started writing about the Hartford Marathon (now over two weeks ago) and it started to turn into a James Michener novel. Those of you not familiar with James Michener will be amused to hear that most of his output consisted of 1000-page-plus doorstops that began with fictional discussions on how pre-Cambrian cellular life started where all his 19th-century melodramas took place. So my discussion was going on WAY to long, it was taking me longer to write than a high school term paper with index cards, and for no good reason. Then it dawned on me that half my readership was probably at the damn race and ran it, too. This realization sunk in as I realized that sometimes alarming blog silence=injury, when that’s not the case. Despite some quad pain on my left side, I’m OK, I’m just obsessing about the next marathon, now less than a week away.

So it looks like I’m not going to post that saga-in-process, because it’s already old news. Too bad, the part about my stop in the port-a-john at mile 8 recalled the 5-minute post-thaw bathroom scene in the first Austin Powers.

But I will say this. The race went well for me, for two reasons. One is that I was generally prepared to run 26.2 miles, I did the right thing and trained a bit. The other reason is those other folks who joined me. Ms. Speedy did quite nicely despite the usual ‘I must be insane to keep doing this crap’ and other more strongly-worded observations. Angry went with the flow, listening to three people ramble on and run and be fairly annoying, all while chaperoning and driving and then pulling out a nice 5K time on the side. And Iron Bob helped me focus in the last few miles as I tried to keep up every time I stopped at a water vacation, uh, station. He did really, really well, as did sub-4 Claire and Mr. A for just racing and putting up with us. So thank you all.

So I showed up and ran my fastest marathon in seven years. I beat the 3:30 finish time plateau I’ve been hitting for several marathons. And I qualified for Boston, which is nice, though I’m not sure if I’ll be there again next April.

And another thing, it was rather nice to run a small-scale race instead of the behemoth New York/Chicago/Marine Corps/Boston-type races with thirty or forty thousand runners all required to arrive hours before the start. This weekend, I’ve been assigned to take the 5AM bus at the New York Public Library to get to the start line of the NYC Marathon that has a gun time of… 9:40. I love the race, but it’s just getting gigantic, and pretentious, and overproduced (sort of like all those Pirates of the Caribbean movies). The starting line area in Hartford was terribly unorganized, but beyond that, it was a fine race once it got going. Of course, if I’d hit the wall, my opinion may have been different. But I didn’t, and it was a fine day, thanks to my training, and friends who made a difference.