Philadelphia Marathon

Today: 13.5 miles

Week: 23 miles

Workout: Helped pace Erika & Denie for their marathons.

Took the Bolt Bus with Denie on Saturday. $26 round trip. Tough to beat that price. Ate some great Italian food in downtown Philadelphia. Got lost in Camden (not recommended) on the way to the hotel in New Jersey. Woke up at 5:40 a.m. on Sunday. Erika and Denie were already gone. Thankfully, I was able to leave later. Drove downtown with Jon, Jared, and Stacy.

We were walking to mile 8, which is where I planned on watching Denie pass and then, jumping in the race to pace Erika for three miles, to mile 11. I called Farbod, who jumped in at mile 6 with Denie, and he said they had already passed mile 7. I was still about a 1/2 mile away from mile 8. So I ran to mile 8 and called Farbod again. It turns out I just missed them. DAMN!

I waited and saw Allyson go by. About 15 minutes passed, and I was beginning to wonder if I missed Erika. Then I saw a huge pace group approaching, and Erika spotted me first. Jared had already joined her. Darcy was also with the group. For the first couple of miles, I had trouble staying with them because it was so crowded. I got separated a few times and had to catch up. I was timing Erika's mile splits and noticed that one of them was something like 8:00 and another was in the 7:50s. Oh Great! I was going to be responsible for making her hit the wall from running too fast early in the race.

I ended up so focused on trying to stay near Erika that I forgot to look for the bridge that crossed the river. At mile 13, Stacy joined us, and Jared stopped. I think it was about Mile 14 where we caught up to Allyson and Farbod. Around mile 15 or so, we began seeing the leaders of the race running the other way. I still wanted to run a couple of miles with Denie, and I was beginning to worry if that was even possible at that point.

Farbod and I stopped around mile 16. We walked to other side of the street where runners under 3 hour pace were approaching mile 23. I guess we must have waited for about 30 minutes before we saw Denie. My legs had tightened up long ago and running just a mile was questionable. But once we got going, they loosened up a bit, and I made it to the finish.

I didn't actually cross the finish line. I hopped a fence 100 yards from the finish and ran back to mile 25. I waited there until I saw Darcy, Erika, and Stacy, who was still pacing Erika. The clock at mile 25 said 3:36. Erika and Darcy wanted to run under 3:40 so that they would qualify for Boston. I wasn't sure what Erika and Darcy's official time was at that point. I should have known they were doing OK since the 3:40 pace group was behind us. I could see that Erika was suffering, but she was still maintaining a good pace. As we got closer, the crowd became larger. All the runners had their names on their bibs, and Erika & I had our West Side Y singlets on. I could hear "Go Erika" and "Go West Side YMCA" coming from the crowd. Farbod met up with us about 400 meters from the finish. He urged the crowd to make noise, and they did! It was great.

Denie ended up finishing in 3:19:20. Darcy crossed the line at 3:37:53, Erika at 3:38:29, Greg (who Farbod and I looked for but never saw) at 3:54:53, Allyson at 3:56:23, and Lisa (another friend) in around 6 hours. I didn't find out her official time. Everyone did a terrific job! Denie, Darcy, and Erika all qualified for the Boston Marathon, which was their goal. They will have to run Boston in 2011 since registration for the 2010 Boston Marathon has already closed. Jeanne was out on the course cheering for everyone. We have such a supportive running group.