Clif Bars giveaway

I love to read other blogs where people are helping others out by giving things away and here is the next one.

You can visit his website at www.tridadoffive.blogspot.com

I tried to copy and paste onto my site but I am having problems doing that. Sorry for the inconvience but please visit his site.

Snickers report

Chip time 5:10:34

I am happy with this time. I wanted to try and break 5 hours for the first time but most of all I wanted to finish with a smile on my face. I did that and was glad I did. I told myself to start off slow so that I would have some energy left at the end. I was glad I did.

I got a chance to run with Karen and it was going to be here first marathon. She was so strong keeping us on track with our 2:1 ratio. She kept me on track until the end.

More to come later but for now it is time to get back into bed and rest the legs.

10 and counting

I never had any intentions of ever being able to say I have now run 10 marathons in my life. Nor would I have ever thought of running them in 2 years. I can truly say that my body is not the same now. I have gotten to a point where my body is conditioned to a long run. People still come up to me and ask me why I do this and I tell them the same reason why people run 5 and 10Ks every weekend. My body is just use to it. I am not going to lie and say it is easy to do it because that would be a lie. My back is starting to hurt, my feet are sore and my legs/hips hurt.

Looking back, I have traveled alot of roads to get here. Not only the roads to travel to the courses but the roads on which I have laid down some training miles. I was joking with my wife and I told her I have run enough miles in the marathons to go from Macon to Jacksonville Florida. Then if you were to log in my training miles and 5,10 and 12K races, I would take me to Miami.

I had a wonderful time at Snickers this year. I wanted to be able to finish this race with a smile on my face and I did just that. I will write a recap on the race when they publish the finishing times but I will tell you that I missed my PR by about 4 minutes this time. I am ok with this. I had other goals that I wanted to do and I will discuss them later.

I have one more marathon to do next month, Country Music Marathon in Nashville Tenn on April 24. This will be my last marathon that I have pre-registered for this year. I am planning on having fun with this race. My friend Melissa Cowart told me that she has never run a marathon under 6 hours and I told her if she wanted to run with me I would try and help her obtain her goal.

After I get through with this race, it will then be time to put all my training towards the Augusta 70.3 race. I need to put all my time to this race cause it will be my biggest training regiment that I will have put my body through.

For now it is time to sit back and give my legs a break today. When I get more on my finishing times I will get my recap posted. Until then, continue on.

Getting ready....

As my body gets a couple of days of rest, it is now time to pack again and get ready for the Snickers marathon this weekend. I always look foward to this race because this is the place where I ran my 1st marathon 2 years ago.

I have been playing around with how I want to deal with this race. I always get so close to breaking the 5 hour mark at Snickers. I am trying to tell myself to star off a little slower this time so that I will be strong in the end.

I believe that is what I am going to do so that I can enjoy this one and finish strong at the end. This will be my 10th marathon and I will have only 1 more to do next month and I will be thtrough with my bucket list of 6 marahons in 6 months.

Donna part 2

Looking back at a great event and weekend. I have had a chance to look at the pictures and I am going to post some of them. I have not sent them out to everyone so I am not going to put all of them out.

Saturday morning we decided to get up early and head out to the expo. We wanted to get there and see everything and still have time to get back to the beach and go out for dinner with our friends. The expo was nice and large. It was very crowded with all the normal stuff from drinks, gels, clothes and gadgets. While I was there, they had a booth that was giving away free messages and yep I got one. OMG it was wonderful. I asked the lady if she was married and she replied yes and my husband does not get them either.

I was walking around and meet Donna, who the marathon is actually named after. She was signing her books that were for sale. I did not know until after the race that I actually ran a portion of the race with her.
Also Jeff Galloway was there signing everything for people and answering questions while posing for some pictures.

I got a chance to pose with Jeff Galloway after his autographed my bib number for the race. I then found out that I was running the race with Jeff. He is notarise for running the races in 5 hours. He was running with his wife, Barbara.

After a great expo and walking on the beach, it was time for a good dinner with friends. We went to Outback for steak, chicken and potatoes. YUMMY it was so good. It gave me a chance to give some last minute suggestions to the runners while Mandie is trying to tell me to hush. She said that I should not be saying anything and I told her that I was trying to help them not go through the bad things that I had gone through before.

Well, it is now or never. It is race day and my nerves are kicking in high gear. I am trying to hide my emotions but it was hard. I was nervous about thinking about trying to break my PR and also about my friend Kevin and his wife Shannyn running their first race. I was hoping and praying everyone would run an accident free race.

We went out to get on the bus and good Lord it was freezing, 37 degrees. I wanted to find some coffee to warm up. This is Florida, it is not suppose to be this cold. I had an old pair of socks that I cut the ends off to make arm warmers. It actually worked.

Here is a picture of Kevin and Shannyn before the race. Note that they are smiling now. Will they later????????

Here is the Macon Galloway running group. Note that they are smiling before the race. Will this continue until the end???????

Mandie was able to catch the shuttles over to the beach and grab some pictures for us. Here is one of the ones that I actually liked from the race. I was still feeling good and had visions of a PR dancing through my mind.

But at last, the best pictures at the finish line. Me right after the race before I had my beers, after I had time to rest, me and Kevin, and the group with victory beers.

After the race we got to ride the buses back to the motel. Well, I think we had the coolest bus driver ever. I was joking around with him about if he could go through a drive thru on the way back and he laughed with his boss standing outside the door. Well when he closed the door, he said if you get me a McFlurry I will take you there. I told him I would buy him a Happy Meal also. So on the way back we parked on the road and Mandie ran inside and got 7 Happy Meals and a McFlurry for our driver. Man we were all happy on the bus. We were all craving salty fries. Then we decided that after we showered and changed that we would go to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner. My friend Melissa Cowart was in town visiting her parents and she stopped by to have dinner with us. It was so cool to see more friends to be able to celebrate with. Here she is with us and Mandie eating their seafood dinner.

But by far the main reason why we ran the 26.2 with Donna Marathon is to help find a cure for breast cancer. It was very moving to hear and see stories about survivors and the ones that have gone on to be with the Lord. There was alot of emotions through out the entire race. I am very glad to have had a chance to run this event. I strongly would say to anyone looking forward to running a wonderful marathon, I would say run this one.

Have a great day and help save the Ta-tas.

Recap for 26.2 with Donna

I will start out by saying if you have never run a marathon, I would highly recommend this one to be your first. The crowd support of this race is awesome. I think there were more supporters than runners. The town of Jacksonville really came out in great support. If you were on the beach, on the bridge or on the surface streets, there was support in large numbers.

I went out in the 5 hour pace group to try and beat my PR. I really thought this was going to be the day. Here is the time chip stations with the splits:

5M: 00:56:43

10M: 1:55:41

Half: 2:30:36 ON TRACK FOR PR AND SUB 5

15M 2:52:06 GETTING HOT AND HUNGRY

20M 3:57:28 THINKING I GOT A NEW PR AND THEN IT HIT ME LIKE A BOMB

Chip: 5:36:41


I was so close to getting my PR and breaking the 5 hour demon. I thought I had finally beaten it and it came back to bite me in the butt. HARD. When I came into the 20's, I was spent. I had lost my gel holder and the last 10 miles was run on nothing but water. They were passing out GU's but nothing in plain flavor. I was starting to get sick to my stomach and I was eating salt packets. I wanted a plain gu and no one had any. I started to cry. I was so upset that I had come so far in my training to miss it by such a little distance. I was upset knowing that all the training I had put out is now gone down the drain. I started thinking that Mandie is waiting patiently for me at the finish line to watch me break 5 hours. Then it hit me again and I got upset even more. As I ran past a police officer, I asked if I could borrow his phone to call Mandie to let her know that I was going to be late. She was so supportive to tell me that it was going to be ok and just finish.

I hobbled my way to the finish line to receive my beautiful medal that is partially see through. I will post some pics soon of the medal and race.

I have to give huge props to the Macon Galloway Runners who ran their first marathon. They were awesome to have given up so much time into training and run 26.2 miles. As we ran through the miles, I was able to run with Jeff Galloway and his wife as he runs the events in a 5 hour pace. He was running past us and talking the whole time. It was great to see my partner from work Kevin to run his 1st marathon. I told him that he would be able to finish it.

There is so much to tell about this race so I will post more later as it comes back to me. The pre race food with friends after the race with friends and the whole event. More to come later. For now it is time to get ready for Snickers Marathon next Saturday.

I'm back and ......

I am not happy. I am back from my Jacksonville trip from the 26.2 with Donna marathon. As you know I was wanting to break my 5 hour demon. Well, the idiot is still on the loose. I was not able to break this lingering mark that is hoovering above my head. I was on track until mile 20 and then I feel off the band wagon. My finish time was 5:36 and some change. I will try and post a recap of the race in the next couple of days while I am in the recovering stage right now.

Snicker Marathon in Albany Ga in 2 weeks. I need to hurry up and rest so that I can get back out there again. Until then, have a wonderful day.