Covenant Health Marathon

3 marathons in 4 months. Who would have thought? I had thought after completing the Sunburst Marathon in May of last year, I would be done for awhile. Matt had other ideas for me. My brother seemed to need someone to come along to his races, and I seemed to be the most willing. After you do one, anything after is pretty easy. That seemed to be the basis for each of his sales pitches to get me to come along. That was fairly accurate. My first one I trained all 18 weeks. I probably only missed 3 or 4 training runs. With 4 runs a week in that schedule, I thought I was doing pretty good. For this last marathon, I ran probably 4 times in the month leading up to the race. I went in with pretty low expectations. I would say, with my lack of training, I was pretty proud of the result of the race, although the course and weather had plans to bring me and everyone else down.
We ran this marathon in Knoxville, Tennessee. The finish was at the 50 yard line inside Neyland Stadium. It was pretty nice. It was cold, windy, and hilly. All things that make running 26.2 miles not be so fun. The hills were brutal. I went in there knowing that Eastern Tennessee was pretty hilly, but it seemed to me that there were very few flat parts of the entire course. The temperature was cold. The three days leading up to the race had the temperature up in the 70s. Race day was 46º. It only got colder as the race went on. Lastly, the wind was the worst! I think that I went 8 straight miles having the wind in my face. No matter which way I turned, it seemed to hit me straight on.
I was happy with the result and can say that I am done with marathons for awhile. I told Matt that if there were any races in the future, I would either do the half (13.1 miles) or a 5K (3.1 miles). I'm waiting awhile until I hit marathon distance again. I need a break.
As I have now done a marathon beyond my two races, I am using my wild card to knock out a goal I no longer want to do. That goal is 94. Join a district committee at work. At the time when I wrote my goals, I thought it would be a good career move. I no longer want to do it at all. I'm just not up for any more meetings than I already have. Another goal down!