There is no failure except in no longer trying

I found this quote years ago in a magazine tore it out and have kept it as a reminder to never give up no matter what. Why do I bring this up now??? Well my bloggy friends, once again I have trained my a@#@#s off and fell short of my goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.

The good news is I have tons of excuses....the course was much tougher than previous years and in fact was quite hilly, it was windy, it was humid, the roads were bad, it rained, I blistered, it got sunny and hot..need anymore? I think not. Anyway here is a brief recap of the day.

We headed down to the course as planned right at 6am, the race was to start at 7am. Running was Jerry, Jaime and my cousin Butch who I had not seen for the better part of 20 years but was super happy he was there. Supporting was Sue, Courtney and Linda. The runners lined up at the starting line and the gun went off right at 7am and off we ran. At that point it was a little windy and somewhat humid. I lost Butch right at the start but could see Jerry and Jaime moving quickly down either side of the road and they both looked to be having a great start. I chose to run down the middle and did not have much of a problem threading through the crowd to some open space where I could settle in. Right from the start you had to pay attention to the roads. They were tore up pretty good from this past winter, with lots of holes and loose gravel to worry about. This was the case pretty much through the entire day. I settled into a nice pace and was running just below an 8 min pace and feeling pretty good. The first few miles had some slight, steady upgrades but were not to bad at all and things were going well. After mile five things started to get a little dicey. The course now included a series of overpasses that were not by themselves anything to bad but string them all together and they start to take a toll. I made it through halfway and was treated to one of the many cheering spots where Sue, my niece Courtney and Butch's wife Linda were set up to encourage us...I was right on pace at that point and very happy to get the encouragement. Right after the halfway point there was another of the long steady uphills, that again shouldn't have been much but really took a lot of energy to get up. After that i started to fade a bit and by mile eighteen I was off pace and in trouble. I saw my cousin Carole and her son at mile 20 and dropped my fuel belt with them and limped the rest of the way to the finish line to a disappointing 3:47:52 finish. I was 23rd out of 65 in my age group.

Several things happened that day that really have me thinking things through. First just before mile 25 two ladies passed me, one obviously pacing the other. They were almost there and whatever her goal was it was going to be close and the pacer was really pushing the pacee. Just before the 26 mile marker I came along the two again. The pacee was crumpled on the ground and they were calling for medical..her day was done and she had only .2 miles to go. Second, when I crossed the line my people both runners and supporters were so happy to see me and seemingly proud that the fact I missed my goal by 17 mins never crossed my mind. Third, when I was running toward the finish line I was pumping my arms, the crowd was cheering and I heard some guy yell out.."be proud, you know what you just did!!". Finally, in recapping the race I voiced my disappointment to my cousin and his response was something along the lines of...are you kidding, you just ran a 3:47, I would kill for that.

In any event here is where I am at and it feels really good to put it out there. Its not that I am not going to try and qualify anymore and be a failure, its just that it can't be my main goal as it is sucking all of the fun out of running marathons. From now on my goal will be to run marathons as fast as I can and if I qualify that's great and if not that's great too...after all isn't this supposed to be fun??

Before closing this out it wouldn't be right if I did not recognize the other runners in my group who all ran the half marathon. Jerry, despite some severe stomach issues, finished 12th out of 80 in his age group. The only one of us to grab any hardware was Jaime who finished 2nd in her age group out of 25 and Butch finished 20th out of 60 in his age group...not bad, eh??

That's all for now