Monday, December 07, 2009

It has been too long...


Well, what can I say? I have been pretty busy lately. It is about time I have updated my blog, so here goes...

I did it. I finished the Philadelphia Marathon. Not only did I finish, I finished faster than I thought I would. At the beginning of this training season, I decided my goal would be 6 hours. In the Galloway program, we do a measure called the Magic Mile where you run a mile as fast as you can. Based on your finish time for the mile, you can predict your finished for every length of race. My Magic Mile indicated I would finish a marathon in 6 hour, 15 minutes. I was a bit bummed because I really wanted to run 6 hours. Well, I finished it in 5 hours, 54 minutes. Ha!

Philadelphia is a wonderful city. We arrived on Friday to give up plenty of time to get ready for the race and to be able to visit my family who lives in the area. We had a great hotel right on Benjamin Franklin Parkway which is the main road that leads to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the race begins and ends. There were several members of the Raleigh Galloway running group in town for the race. Our close friends, Chris & Tara as well as Gary & Kari, were all there as well. We met up with them at the race Expo on Friday, and enjoyed a great Italian meal with them Friday night.

On Saturday, we were able to visit the largest museum of Rodin sculpture outside of Paris in the morning. We also walked up to the museum to have our picture taken with the Rocky statue, and to run those famous stairs. My dad and his family flew down from Boston to spend the weekend with my aunt and uncle. He picked us up around lunchtime on Saturday, and we spent the rest of the day with family. It was so nice to see everyone, and to know that they would be waiting for me at the finish line. My aunt and uncle are great hosts - they served an early meal of spaghetti with turkey meat sauce just for us.

Soon, it was time to head to the hotel to get some sleep before the big race. To be continued...

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