ING Marathon/Half Marathon

Today was an exceptionally good day. Morning rolled around at about 3a.m. when I was not able to continue sleeping anymore..so I laid there thinking about the day to come amongst all the other thoughts racing through my mind. I was excited to be running the half with two friends Jason Gunter from Ft. Meyers FL, and the famous Mike Lenhart Founder of Getting 2 Tri charitable foundation. Jason Gunter is a amputee athlete with a below the knee amputation. Jason is a great athlete, an amazingly nice guy and really good runner. We all met up about 10 minutes before start at the G2T tent and made our way down to the start. We were in corral B, which was about 50 yards from the actual start. We were really excited to be there, and even though he has a Bronchial infection Mike was right there next to us (at a distance) running. The race went about as smoothly as I could imagine a race going. Our pace was great as we made are way in an out of nearly every Atlanta neighborhood, and what seemed to be every type community in between. The three of us ran the half marathon today enjoying the shorter distance and getting a chance to ease up talk a bit on the run. Pace did however increase a bit when the rain started, or when Jason wanted to make up time. We enjoyed mostly dry weather and cool temps as did everyone else it seemed. Today was a day for PR's from what I can tell. Aside from us running we had a bunch of friends running today as well. My friend Jon Obst had an impressive day today despite some small Gastro issues, he finished I think 7th or 8th place with a solid 2:45 marathon! Amazing time considering he had been slightly injured and was off of recovering. Other friends did equally as well, Christian Griffith ran a solid 3:40 marathon the WEEK before he is heading up to the infamous Barkley Marathons!! Nuts Dude, Nuts. Also the savior of the day Nils Pederson, who graciously gave me a ride with "no sure way of knowing where we were going till we found it blindly on accident" to get my car at mile 10, somewhere my lovely wife parked the car hours earlier. Thanks again Nils, great race post stress fracture! The day ended well, Jen and her runner Kevin finished, with Kevin running his 99th marathon today, with an amputated foot mind you! And to top that off the G2T camp went off without a hitch, well except for Marshall Hamilton...yeah Marshall you know what I'm talking about ;) But all in all today was a great ending to an amazing week. Now its taper time.