DC Marathon
Grant recently determined that since he was moving to Washington DC, he had a great opportunity to compete in the Marine Corps Marathon, a.k.a. D.C. Marathon, a.k.a. The People’s Marathon. So, naturally he asked his older and crazier brother to run with him. And I, of course, agreed to run with him. So, after months of training and comparing times online, Karen and I flew to Washington DC a few days before the race.
The Saturday before the race Kelly had a soccer game that we attended, then off to the race packet pick-up, and then to a massive block party thrown by one of Grant’s and Evelyn’s friends from Edwards. The weather turned cold this day.
Race day came up quickly the next morning. 5am wakeup. 6am depart for the race. 7am warmups off and to the start line even though the temperature was somewhere around 40 degrees. 7:45am sun rise, thank goodness. 8am start time, time to get warm.
Grant and I trained to complete this thing in three and a half hours. He was at the top of his game. I was not. So, it was real clear from about mile two that Grant would be finishing ahead of me. We kept up about a 7:30 min mile for the first half of the race. From that point forward, Grant kept up the pace and I dropped to 8 to 8:30 min miles. After another several miles I ran into a problem and dropped to between an 11 and 20 min mile for the remainder of the race.
Grant succeeded. He completed his first marathon in three hours twenty-eight minutes. An amazing time for multi-race veterans, let alone a first timer.