Run, Forest, Run

This past weekend Charlie, Nest, and myself participated in the Baltimore Half-Marathon! Charlie clocked in an amazing 2 hours, Nest came in at 2 hours 5 minutes, and I came in at 2 hours and 19 minutes! The race was a world of difference from the Rock & Roll Half we did in Virginia Beach over Labor Day weekend. Charlie and I stayed together at the Rock & Roll race and ended up doing a 2:30:20 which was 20 seconds too slow to qualify us for the National Marathon here in DC next March, but we just wanted to finish! We all ran together until the first 5k or so...which let me add was all freaking hills! No one told me that so I was getting really tired and out of breath. I have a tendency to breathe too fast which is really bad so I've been trying to work on getting that under control! I dropped back 20 feet or so from Nest and Charlie and finally got sick of trying to catch up so I decided to let them go and go at a pace that was comfortable for me. I got to the 11th mile under the 2 hour marker and was super excited because before the 11th mile, I really had no idea how fast/slow I was even going! I realized I had 30 minutes to run 2.1 miles so I got super excited that the end was in sight! I saw the camera man who takes your final picture from a crane above and started sprinting to the finish, but that was nowhere to be found! They tricked me! At the Rock & Roll marathon, the camera was about 30 feet or so from the finish so I assumed the case was the same in Baltimore, boy was I wrong? I just kept running and running through Camden Yards until I finally yelled at some poor helpless security guard and said "where the heck is the finish!" He told me it was "up a ways" gee thanks. Well I finished and had Charlie and Nest waiting on me, which I was thankful for because I was proud of my time! We're still debating on what to do about the National Marathon. Charlie wants to run the whole, but I think it's going to be hard to train in the DC winter and I think we should only do the half...we'll see! If I do the half, I'll be the only one! Nest, Danny, and Charlie are all wanting to do the whole. Peer pressure!