Hopefully it is not one of those things where I end up encased in concrete at the bottom of a lake.
Update: I am safe and sound. She just took me to a place in Groton we have been wanting to try. I had the 24oz porterhouse.
My wife and two of my daughters are in the background of this finish line shot.
the guy with the gold shirt beat me by 4 minutes and so this picture should be from somewhere around mile 20-24.
At about the 1/2 way point on the Rourke Bridge.
And now more numbers, because I like numbers and their possible meanings...
In the latest race, I came in 10th among the 32 "Davids" entered, 289th out of 1193 overall, and 4th among the 20 Chelmsfordians. If you look at the ratios, I did best v. my fellow townspeople, then among all entrants and worst against Davids. Here is my hypothesis: Chelmsford is one of the three towns the race went through and so this race is very convenient for us. Maybe this caused people who are not as serious about running to give it a try.
As for the fact I did worse among Davids than overall: Davids are all men and men are faster (on average) than women. Only 42 of the 289 who beat me were women, although if they were a small percentage of the total entrants, this wouldn't suggest anything. If only 22% of the entrants were women and 22% beat me, then it would show that they are as fast as the men on average.
I don't want to go through the whole 1193 and count the number of women, but if they are slower, maybe they will be a higher percentage of the last 289 finishers...(A pause while I look at the results)...152 of the last 289 were women.
By Mark Steyn
Supposedly, under the Obama tax plan, 95 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut. You’d think that at this point the natural skepticism of any sentient being other than six-week-old puppies might kick in, but apparently not. If you’re wondering why Obama didn’t simply announce that under his plan 112 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut, well, they ran it past the focus groups who said that that was all very generous but they’d really like it if he could find a way to stick it to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and whatnot. So 95 per cent it is.
Should you read it all? Yes.
The key to all these numbers: 289 was my overall place out of 1189 who finished, 89/250 was my place among the guys in the 40-49 age bracket.
The 3:24 is the net time and the 3:25 is the start time: The chip system deducts the time it takes you to cross the start line from the total time.
The asterisk means that I qualified for the Boston Marathon. (Ask me later how I feel about that.) It was my formal goal for this race, but the idea of running a marathon is not really attractive right now.
The race went pretty much according to my plans. I have noticed from training runs that I really fade after 13-16 miles. So what I wanted to do was to run fast for the first 13 miles and get myself ahead of my 8 min/mile schedule. I was around 3 minutes ahead at 6, then 5 minutes ahead at 10 and about 10 minutes ahead by 16 miles. At this point I figured I had it in the bag: I had 10 miles to go and could do it at a 9 minute pace and still make 3:30. At 18 miles, nature showed she still had some trump cards. My left calf started to cramp. If you have ever had a leg cramp, you know that all talk of maintaining 9 minute miles is out, along with running at all, or even walking. The cramp never did develop but my legs felt like one mass of pulled and sore muscle. My pace deteriorated from there. I lost 5 minutes in the last 8 miles and would bet that half of that loss was in the last 2 miles.
Posts
All Comments
