Congrats on a well paced race.   I laughed at your comment about calculating the finish time if you walked the rest of the way in.  I've totally done that myself.   Then I think about how long I will be there on the course walking, and how good a shower and hot meal is going to feel, and keep on running.

Hey! You just appeared out of the...you know.

 A plan with more flexibility might work better for you.

Maybe so.  Pfitz is not such a flexible guy.  I could break out the Daniels book at put something together.

Congrats on overcoming the training obstacles to run and finish CIM. And if you don't mind waiting for me to finish, I'll let you know if I ever come out west for a race, though it's more likely to be an ultra or trail run than a marathon.

Absolutely!  Our local 50K is a pretty good one, I think.  It's very tough, though.  The forests around here are beautiful and hilly.  Maybe that's why a local kid won Western States this year?  He had done this one 5 times as a teen.  One day I will get up the nerve to sign up.

Nuun is disgusting.

I kinda like the triple berry.  Since I was mostly alternating water and nuun, and so was the course, I accidentally got all triple berry until my last nuun station, when I got the lemon lime.  That shit is gross.

It was a pleasure meeting you. Sorry about my potty mouth, I know I swear an awful lot. I actually tried to stop once, but that only led to more swearing.

I had a great time and honestly didn't notice the swearing.  I used to never swear, but I've been swearing way more lately.  It helps.

It was tough out there but imagine feeling all of that and have it being hot, so we had that going for us.

That was one of the things I was telling myself towards the end of the race.  "At least it's not hot."

D, Eric, Bluesky- Thanks!

You win.

Please tell me that I didn't win any Pop Tarts!  I had some for "dinner" the night before, then some for "breakfast" before the race.  Those AM ones were super unpleasant because I had like 10 minutes between when I woke up and when I needed to be done with them.  That was about in line with the mile 15 gel for nastiness.

At least that's what I told myself.   Sounds like a good call to ditch the pace group early.

I told myself that too.  I wonder if I'd have pushed harder if I hadn't known that story.  But I don't think I could have.

Congrats on a well paced race.   I laughed at your comment about calculating the finish time if you walked the rest of the way in.  I've totally done that myself.   Then I think about how long I will be there on the course walking, and how good a shower and hot meal is going to feel, and keep on running.

Right.  You need the math for running to seem like a better option.  Good to see you again!

I like weird stuff like that during a marathon. Makes you think you're seeing things. And yes, I could run a west coast marathon with you and others  sometime. Get away from that east coast bias. Mountains to Beach is far better than CIM. Anyway, enjoy the recovery. You earned it!

I am biased and suspect there's more weird stuff like this at west coast marathons.  My first thought when I saw the goat was that it seemed more like an Oregon marathon all of a sudden!  I think I'd like to run marathons on a variety of different courses.  That's a way to keep the experiences and challenges alive without only focusing on splits and PRs.

I don't remember seeing the Scientologists but I do remember the political signs and the Jesus signs.

 

Nice job on pacing it well and I had fun hanging out with you.

The scientologists were just trying to pretend to be an aid station.  But they were out in front of a "Dianetics" building and they had signs or shirts or something promoting Dianetics.  I remember feeling kinda bad for them because they were out there with oranges or water or something and everybody sort of averted their eyes and went by.

I had a blast hanging out as well!

 I did see/hear the Jesus dude, who looked directly at me and said "You need Jesus!". I gave him a look like you have no idea how right you are right about now. lol

The guy was in the perfect spot for what he was up to.  We all needed Jesus in that moment.  Any earlier in the course, we weren't suffering enough.  Any later, and we would have all been too wiped out to care.

LOL at the Jesus guy.  After my last marathon, there was a guy in the finish area screaming about how much Jesus hates us all and we're all going to hell.  Can't say I disagreed with him.  

This guy wanted us to know that we were NOT READY if we died today.