Okay, so another marathon is in the bag. That makes it 5 for me thus far, but I'm still stuck at 4 in the "marathon in every state" goal because my last one was in Memphis. The Country Music Marathon in Nashville was definitely a good experience overall.

Five of us from Belhaven (myself and 4 soccer players) left at noon on Friday and drove up. It was a six-hour drive in a smallish car, but we made it alright. It was a bonding experience :-)

We arrived at the expo 30 minutes before it was scheduled to close, and it was absolutely packed! I think everyone arrived at the same time we did, so we ended up waiting in line for about an hour.

The hotel we booked was 13 miles outside of Nashville (all the ones closer were sold out because of the 25000 other runners), so we drove there and carbo-loaded at the special buffet dinner they had for marathoners. We all ate too much because the food was delicious, especially the greasy garlic bread. Following the dinner we watched a motivational movie about marathons and hit the sack (around midnight, I think).

4:30 AM came early, but probably because of our excitement, none of us had any trouble waking up. People always say that two nights before a marathon is your most important night of sleep, and I believe it. I ran my best marathon in Tupelo, Mississippi last August after having only slept 20 minutes the night before.

I had mixed emotions about the race itself. The atmosphere at the race was nice, there were plenty of fans along the side of the road, there were bands at every mile, and the t-shirt and finisher's medal were cool. And I felt great for the first 15 miles. Those were the positives.

There were not-so-great aspects of the race as well. Most significantly, it was hot. 50 degrees is ideal for a marathon, and the high in Nashville on Saturday was 90. It was ridiculous. At every water stop (about 1 every mile) I was drank a cup of Cytomax and a half cup of water, and dumped a cup of water over my head. It's difficult to stay hydrated in that heat. The course was also much hillier than I was expecting, and it took a toll on my already-sore hip flexors. As I mentioned, there was music on the course, but because it was country music, it did nothing to motivate me.

In hindsight, I probably ran the first half too fast, but I don't regret it. At the half mark I was at 1:28:30, because I had told myself that I wanted to put myself in a position to break three hours if I was feeling good. By mile 15, I knew I had no chance at that. My legs had begun to tighten up, so I eased off the pace significantly and ended up with a 3:11:08. Not terrible considering the conditions, and a lot of other people were slower than expected as well. In the past years of that race, a 3:11 would have put me in about 100th place, but this year I ended up in 55th place out of about 4000 people. I really don't ever care about my placement, because there are so many people faster me, but it was nice to know that I wasn't the only one going slower than usual.

Well, that's about all there was to it. The drive back wasn't as bad as I was expecting (No cramps!). Probably because I was going slower the second half, my legs didn't feel terribly the following day, and I even went for a nice, barefoot, 1-mile jog around the soccer field. Good times.

Now I'm ready for my next one! I'm looking at doing Chicago again on October 11, but we'll have to see. If the med school class schedule is similar to last year's one, we'll have a test on Friday before that race, and two on the following Monday. I might just be insane enough to fly up there for that. Two of my good friends are running it, and I'd love to do it with them.