My First Marathon

In the summer of 2001, our veteran marathon running friend Marybeth Lima asked Becky and I if we wanted to run legs in a relay to support her in running the Dallas marathon on 9 December, 2001. We both agreed that it could be fun and said we'd do it. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized I wanted to run the full marathon. I've been a competetive swimmer, I've raced bicycles, and have even done a triathalon. One of my life goals has been to run a marathon and I saw this as an opportunity.

So, upon returning from a family vacation in Wisconsin, I stopped by the local running shoe store. After more than two hours, I left with nice new running shoes, socks, running shorts and a book, Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide about training for and running marathons by Hal Higdon. After reading the book I was ready to start training. I went to his web site and decided to use his Novice Training schedule as my training guide. My goal is to run the Jacksonville, FL Marathon on 15 December, 2001.

You can follow my progress here if you choose. As time permits, I'll document more of my experiences with marathon training here and hopefully will write up my experience after running the marathon.

I Did It!!!

It wasn't the fastest in the world (no Boston Marathon for me) and it wasn't even as fast as I wanted to go, but I finished it and ran the whole distance. Marybeth, her brother and I ran together up to about mile 22 when Marybeth's brother needed to walk. We'd been slowing our pace since mile 8 and the poor guy was really hurting. I ran the last 3.6 miles in 30 minutes to make up some time. It hurt, but I did it. My knees really bothered me from miles 11 through 19, but after that it was a pain I could deal with.

My family will be happy to know that the last 17 miles were run for you. I picked a mile for each family member (on both sides) and mentally had you helping and encouraging me to get through that particular mile. It really did help. :)

You can see the official results here or you can click here to see my local copy and directly find Brian's results, Marybeth's results, or her brother John's results.