OK, now for Bob's marathon: I started out at a nice easy zone-1 pace with Bonnie (the blonde wearing 1036 and sunglasses that you see in two of these photos). We kept a solid 10:50 mile pace for nearly every mile that I managed to time for the first half of the race.
The two of us ran about three miles before stopping at her house (on the course) to "void". After a quick chat with various friends and neighbors, we continued on... By mile 8, we were still on pace. but we had begun to fantasize about stopping at that really great French pastry shop in Los Gatos. The halfway point was the Los Gatos High School track. We were beginning to feel the distance by then, but John (Bonnie's SO) ran along beside us with encouraging words and peanut butter sandwiches.
My memory of it begins to blur at this point, but the run back down to San Jose included another "pit stop" at a public facility in Vasona park. We chatted with each other and fellow runners. By mile 18, we were in that grim stage. We told each other jokes and stories to take our attention away from the overwhelming fatigue.
Somewhere between mile 22 and 23, I began to feel pretty good (I thought - good hallucinations, anyway). I left Bonnie to see how much "sprint" I had left in me. I pushed my HR up to around 155. In training, this puts me at about 7:30 mile pace. But with over 4 hours of running behind me, 155 barely got me to 9:00 pace. Ouch. I may have passed over 100 runners during this "sprint". Or, maybe they were just more hallucinations.
I kept up that pace for about 25 minutes and finished "strong". My finishing time was 4:47 - a PR!
Runner number 393 is Scott Feamster - founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology community running club (MITcrc). Scott has been an inspiration to us all. Two weeks before running the SV Marathon, he ran the Lake Tahoe Marathon. Foolish, but an inspiration, none the less. Go Scott!
