It's Official

I'm a marathoner. (Okay, you saw that in a previous post, but now I have the pictures from the race photographers.)

Somewhere around Mile 19, with the Capitol in the background and less than a mile to reach the 14th St Bridge, which is one of the timed cut-off points. (I made it by more than an hour, which was nice.)

Mile 23-ish...Crystal City, which wasn't quite as bad as I'd thought it might. Lots of crowd support and random people offering candy and shots of alcohol in this stretch. No, I did not partake in either.

I'm not entirely sure where this is, though I think it's close to the finish. I didn't take the arm warmers off until past Mile 20, it's not Crystal City, and I'm running alone when I had a friend from 25 to 26. More importantly, when I really magnify the image, it looks like the watch has died, which happened about half a mile before the finish. Note to others: Garmin thinks you should have a sub-5:00 marathon to use thier entry-level GPS watch. At least it's sufficient to cover all my training runs. I'm running and smiling, so I'm going to say that I saw the finish line at this point.

This photo does not at all show how incredibly my feet were hurting. They set up stations all around the monument for the finishers, but as with everything, there's a huge line for the ones people see right after they cross the line and none on the backside. I walked right up to this photographer, got my pic taken and limped off the to Team in Training tent to find my friends.

I promised myself this shirt when I finished the marathon. I admit to ordering it early, but left it in its package until Monday. If you don't know the story of The Blerch, go visit The Oatmeal and learn why he runs insane distances.

Comments

[BJ]

Great pix!