Miserable Marathon

Benjamin and I ran the Freescale Marathon yesterday in bone-chilling weather. The high of the day was 38 degrees and a low of 29. The run was the most miserable to date. Benjamin and I completed the race in a bit over 6 hours, well past the 5-hour goal time we had set for ourselves. Due to knee and ankle problems we walked most of the second half. Many great friends came out to cheer us on which was the only thing that made the race bearable:

• Mile 0: Nick (nickjong) in the clothing drop-off and Jan Collins in the chute
• Mile 6: Renee (preneel) and Robert who came in from Oklahoma to cheer us and two other friends on
• Mile 10: Jeff (jeffford) as he came whizzing by us due to a late start
• Mile 13: Zach (zml) just before the half-way point
• Mile 19: Sheena (sheenaqotj) jogged/walked with us for quite a ways (I’m guessing at the mileage on this one)
• Mile 21: Sarah (quindo) who walked with us for a long ways
• Mile 22: Matt cheered us on even though I didn’t recognize him at first
• Mile 24: Jan Collins and Jonobie (jonobie) on the out-and-back
• Mile 25: Nick (nickjong) who came to the finish line to cheer folks on after completing his half-marathon runTo annoy me even more, somehow they seemed to have screwed up my time: according to the website I have neither a chip nor clock time. Jeff read in one of the forums that due to a human error that some of the start times weren’t recorded forcing them to use the clock time for final race time. Since I have no times whatsoever it makes me think that they have zero or more timings for me but not a finish line marking. How exactly can that happen? It’s not like I have any control over their RF readers. I ran along side Benjamin every step of the way across every mat (including the finish line) so I know what my time is but it is very annoying to know that something is screwed up enough that they don’t even have a clock time on me. I will be particularly pissed if this isn’t resolved and the ADC does not list me as officially finishing the challenge.

  Don’t ask me today if I want to run another race because you’re likely to just get a very negative, emotionally charged response. Ask me in a week or more after I’m less frustrated about the unbelievably shitty weather, poor race timings, lack of clocks at the start and mile markers, and lack of correctly-sized finishing shirts and ADC finishing jackets (what, you have to be fast to get the size you signed up for?). In fact, check back later for a more objective posting on the subject.