3:11:38
28th place overall (out of 582)
4th in age
Every summer now for 4 years running my brother Michael and I have done a mountain hiking trip. Normal plan is we fly in day 1, do a massively long day hike (~20 miles) day 2 and then fly home day 3. Pretty much smash and grab. This year I convinced him to time it close to a marathon so I could kill two birds with one stone. We got together in Missoula on Thursday afternoon then drove up to Glacier National Park, getting there about 9 pm. After a few hours of sleep, we hit the trail head at 6 am Friday morning. Initially we did not know how long the hike was going to be because none of the hiking maps we could find have distances on them. By Michael’s best guesses (using paper and pencil to measure it out) we were going to be hiking ~22 miles. Once we were on the trail and starting seeing distance signs along the way, the truth came out. In the end, we traversed a total of 30 miles in 12 hours. Luckily our elevation was not that bad, only getting to ~9000 feet, so we only had physical tiredness, not altitude tiredness.
Saturday morning I got to sleep in and had a nice french toast breakfast right near my West Glacier Hotel room. We did the scary trek up the Going to the Sun Road. At the Logan Pass visitor center we found out that the tunnel that we had gone though during our hike the previous day had only opened for the season a day or so before. Honestly, we did not even check before we started our hike. Had it been closed, we would have seriously been bummed.
Saturday night found us back in Missoula, now in race-eve mode. On the way down from Glacier I tried to find a restaurant that had pasta because I had not carbo-loaded much at all this week. After 3 restaurants, I finally gave up and had a burger. Seems they don’t have pasta in rural Montana, but they have LOTS of dead animal. Steak, buffalo, chicken, etc. Boo hiss… At least in Missoula (less than 0.1 mile away from my hotel) was my Applebees. And guess what? They had Fiesta Lime Chicken on the menu!
I normally have nobody to eat my pre-race meal with, but this time I did. I left my brother at the hotel and went to dinner with two new friends I have met via facebook from Texas. Susan R.and John K. are fellow ‘state-chasers’ (marathon runners trying to pound out all 50 states) and we had been planning on meeting up for weeks. We had a great conversations, swapping stories about previous races, travel, and philosophies. It really was a great time. I was in bed by 9 pm because I was planning on getting up at 3:30, but there was a really cool double episode of MythBusters on TV so I was still awake at 11:30. Oh well, I was not shooting for a PR anyways 
Race morning was same old same old, only I was tried hard to be quiet so as to not wake up my brother. The finish line was in downtown Missoula, but the start was about 20 miles away, so Susan, John, and I met at 4:45 to head for the buses to get our ride to the start. The temperature in downtown Missoula that early were nice, about 60 degrees. I did not bring a throw away short to keep me warm as I thought it would be fine. Nope,at the starting line the temperature was 49 degrees. Great for running, crap for sitting around in shorts and a singlet. Having hikes 30 miles 2 days before I had no illusions of a fast time. I have been getting my miles up to 70+ in training for two ‘doubles’ this fall and a 50+ mile attempt at relay for life, so I knew my body could handle the distance, I was just not sure how fast. I decided moments before the 6 am race start that I would be happy to break 3:15, and so I went out a hair faster than that pace.
At mile 5, the sun was starting to pop up over the mountains to our east. A very nice sunrise, still cool temps. My pace at mile 5 was a nice and solid 7:17/mile. I was quite happy with that and hoped I could hold on. Out in rural Missoula, we passed many large family plots (or small farms, depending on your perspective) and only went up one long hill at about mile 14. Other than that section, the course was pretty and flat.
With a half marathon with a common start time and finish line, the finish area was crowded when I got there. Because I wanted a nice crisp handstand, I actually had to do a sprint to get to an opening in the crowd, but that is OK. I held the handstand for at least 3 seconds, longer than ever before at a marathon finish line. It got a few ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from the crowd. Final pace? 7:18/mile. That is what we call an ‘even’ pace. I don’t think I have ever been that consistent in my pacing for a marathon. I felt great after finishing, my legs happier than they were 2 days earlier after 30 miles of mountain hiking.
A nice pizza and beer lunch with Michael and we headed to the airport to catch our later afternoon flights. As I was getting into my seat on the first flight to Denver, the young woman sitting next to me was reading a college chemistry book. It turns out she was taking second semester General Chemistry and had a test in just a few days. It also turns out she ran the marathon that morning. After some marathon talk, I then gave her 1.5 hours of tutoring on acid base equilibrium. Conjugate pairs, equilibrium constant calculations, etc. It was actually kindof fun since I have not done any teaching in 2 months and it made the flight go by much quicker. A short layover in Denver and a long slightly delayed flight to Detroit meant I was in my bed at 2:30am. I had only been up for 21 hours at that point. Luckily, I had nothing much scheduled for that next day.
I tried to convince my brother that our annual hiking trip next year should be in Alaska in late June (hey, is there a marathon there then??) and he said ‘no’. Oh well. It was a great weekend, lots of beautiful views, and two great workouts for my legs.
If you want to see the only video footage of one of my handstands, check out the official marathon video below. Handstand is at ~8:02 into the film.
