Hey, if George Bush could do it I know I can. oof 

The GR Marathon named their pace groups after famous people who achieved those times. GW Bush was 3:45, Will Ferrell was 4:00 (the group I started with), P. Diddy was 4:15 (passed me up in the last couple miles), Oprah was 4:30 (I beat her!)

 

one of the highlights of my group's football trip to Boulder was similar. We were returning from dinner at night and one of the guys, from New York, who is apparently a stickler for pedestrian rights, pressed a crosswalk signal so we could cross the street. The crosswalk lights flashed and he/we start to cross. A bus was coming and clearly sees the flashers and slows and stops. A small car in the next lane wasn't slowing much so you wonder... Well, the NY guy moves into the lane the car is traveling in, gets into an "athletic crouch" and fires up a double bird with arm pump action. It's a little hard to describe but was hilarious. He was so irritated and aggressive it was comical. Well, the car does stop, fortunately for him, and we finish crossing. As soon as we are on the curb, the cars starts to roll by. There are two young females in it. The window is down and, as they pass us, the passenger shouts out "Fuck you, old people!" We almost died laughing. The combination of our guy so aggressively defending his right to cross, giving them the double bird, with pump action, then their perfect, stinging comeback, was awesome. We talked about it the rest of the trip and, I imagine, will for years!

Great story lol ! I can relate to the NYer's reaction as Montreal is also quite the pedestrian town, and they literally have 0 concern for car traffic, as it is their RIGHT to cross. I raised my kids differently (who cares if it's your legal.right. He has a car and can run you over!) but some pedestrians are aggressive towards cars.

I have to admit I've never seen the athletic crouch with the double arm pumping the birdie, though. 

 

Nice! You do you. That's one nice thing about this sport/hobby...you can make those decisions without it affecting others.

Definitely. But it's strangely hard to make this decision as nobody I know would skip the marathon in my position. So that has me thinking "what am I missing"? But yeah, no impact on anybody's life or training, but mine.

Since there are enough of us marathon-running idiots here, maybe probing the hive mind will actually answer this for me: how the hell do you finish one of those things being able to walk in a way that doesn't get you offers of medical attention?! (I'm not talking about normal soreness; pretty sure my ITB just hates me.)

If you walk 3 miles from the finish line to your hotel, it gets less noticeable as you progress. 

Running rest day. Did upper body weights.

sdWhiskers, sad about the pedestrian death. I almost posted something on the neighborhood FB page asking drivers not to be nice--too often car 1 will wave me on, but cars are coming from 2-3 other directions that have done nothing to make me think they will stop. This is less at traffic lights and more at the stop signs or parking lots. I've asked the local cops on multiple occasions about crosswalk enforcement or speed enforcement (after being passed multiple times on an uphill by driver's crossing the double yellow line). They todl me they don't have the staff.

Baboon, I either tell driver's they are #1 or throw both arms up and yell whatever curse word seems appropriate.

Running rest day. Did upper body weights.

 

sdWhiskers, sad about the pedestrian death. I almost posted something on the neighborhood FB page asking drivers not to be nice--too often car 1 will wave me on, but cars are coming from 2-3 other directions that have done nothing to make me think they will stop. This is less at traffic lights and more at the stop signs or parking lots. I've asked the local cops on multiple occasions about crosswalk enforcement or speed enforcement (after being passed multiple times on an uphill by driver's crossing the double yellow line). They todl me they don't have the staff.

 

Baboon, I either tell driver's they are #1 or throw both arms up and yell whatever curse word seems appropriate.

This is a great observation. A similar thing happened to me a million years ago while driving and I got hit. I wasn't ticketed but was deemed at fault.

How many rest breaks did you take during this walk?  My longest walk was from the Boston finish line to the team hotel, which was about a mile, and it was an awful yet glorious slow shuffle.

Not a one, and looking back I don't even know how I did it. I just know that the bike taxis were charging something ridiculous like $10 a minute, and the stairs leading down to the subway were a complete nonstarter, so I just kept going and going until it became less of a question of if I could make it, but more of when I would.

 

run all of your training runs at MP and faster and/or run the marathon at or slower than your usual long run pace

I can see this working a treat