2003 May 25: Mad City Marathon

My brother Dan and I did this marathon in Madison, WI (where he lives) a week before his wedding. It was a nice flat course (hey, it's in Madison!), and the weather was nice, too. We started out by walking to the start from his house, where we hung around until the start.

For the first chunk of the race, I felt good. Really good! (Well, maybe not that good. But plenty good enough!) I kept on feeling good all the way through the first half (around 1:35 elapsed time), and I was thinking that I'd finally got my little knee problem (I have an IT band issue that kicks in during long runs. As soon as I stop running, it stops hurting, but if I start running again, it hurts again) licked, and maybe I could speed it up a little bit for the second half and actually be around three hours. Ha! Around 16 miles in, my knee started hurting. From there on, I spent more time walking than running (although it's possible that I covered more distance running than walking).

I did manage a spectacular sprint for the last 150 yards or so, if I say so myself. My final official time was 3:43:12. More details here.