I have been blessed with amazying friends, they continually humble me. These friends decided to drive up the Twin Cities for the marathon.

Twin Cities, MN

They didn't listen to me when I said that I was not training for this and I just wanted to finish the damn thing without an injury. I had never raced over a 10k (and those went terrible) and I also didn't do anything workout wise to suggest anything under the Olympic Trials standard was even possible....my buddy's changed my mind the night before. The funny part at this time in my life was I couldn't afford rent (the beauty of high education). While out in Colorado after I finished grad school I was living on a couch in close proximity of some good friends (Kyle and Sean). I hated sleeping there like a bum, but I have to admit, it was great. It was classic when people would come over to the apartment and realize that the living room was actually MY room, and the couch was MY bed.

How it feels to live on a couch

Another financial variable was I have no decent P.R.'s so Twin Cities did not give me any assistance to the race. So the day before I hitchhiked from the airport to the hotel where I would be staying with my friends that night. I waited in the lobby, excited because I hadn't seen them in months, plus a little nervous about this 26 miler in the morning. So the first thing Enyart says to me when they showed up is, "Olympic Trials huh?" and JJ says, "So are you going for the A standard or the B standard?" I just laughed, neither! But they were serious. Clark and Flip probably said something along those lines too. So we all (they brought their girlfriends Laura and Britney) crammed into one hotel room, and as I was getting ready to sleep on the floor that night I decided to give a sub 2:22 a shot. I figured they drove 8 hours and I could just DNF if it got so ugly I started to walk.

The realaxed nature of my mindset in Minnesota, set up the problems for the Olympic Trials in New York. For Twin Cities, A) I wasn't nervous, B) I never practiced my nutrition during the race. My plan was to go out slow the first few miles, get into 5:24 pace, then try and hammer (well relatively speaking) the last 6 miles to get under 2:22, AND not get hurt! The first few miles I was running in the high 5:30's and felt like dog shit, but I kept telling myself to stay relaxed and get through the rough patches. I learned some oddities of the marathon on the fly; some miles I would run a 5:28 mile and feel like it was a 4:28, other miles would be a 5:15 and feel like a 6:15, the marathon truly is a race of attrition. I hit the half in 1:11:47, and of course my friends were screaming at me to pick it up, and of course I was thinking another 13.1 is a long long way to go. Plus, the last 6 miles were hilly and it was getting warm out. Miles 13-20 went be fine, then I hit the hill at mile 21 and mentally made the push to increase my effort. I got barely under pace by mile 23 and I was worried my left hamstring was going to lock up at any minute, so I treated mile 24 like it was my last mile and went balls out (which at that point only equated to a 5:03 mile). Miles 25-26 I had my friends biking next to me, I was talking to God, and my left hamstring was unraveling like an old rope with each step. Right at mile 26 I looked at the clock and miscalculated that I would have to run a sub 65 second last 400 meters. My thought was "Sh**! I didn't run 26 miles to miss by 1 second" so put the junior high kick in full force, which I'm sure looked more like an 60 plus age grouper. The last few steps I allowed myself to look up at the finish clock and I saw 2:21:36, and I thought "I just closed in 40 seconds!" That made perfect sense, 400 meters in 40 seconds, then I blacked-out.

Medical Tent