My (running) Life in Medals - 2001 Austin Marathon

"I'll never do this again."

I lied.  After vowing to never run another marathon, on Feb 18, 2001 I lined up and ran the Austin Marathon. After the physical pain of my first marathon faded, I was left with a lingering feeling of the need to run a marathon.  I cheated myself by not training properly.  I cheated myself out of the experiencing the race.  Instead, I had experienced suffering.

In the fall of 2001, I was completing my final semester of undergrad at Texas A&M.  I had applied to grad school, but I was waiting to find out my fate.  The plan  was to stay in College Station for the spring and summer and start grad school in the fall of '01.  During the fall semester of '00 I heard of a marathon training group through the Rec Center, so I went to the informational.  The next thing I know, I was training for the Austin Marathon.*

I developed a knee issue only a few weeks before the race, but since I'm stubborn, I decided to run anyway.  My goal was to break 4 hours and one of the other guys I had been training with had the same goal.  We ran the first 18 miles together, but my knee got so bad that I told him to go on.  I was on pace for sub-4 hours through 18, but as my knee got worse, I was reduced to walking.  Over the next 8 miles, the pain got so bad that there were literally tears rolling down my face.  I ended up finishing in 4:19:xx, but I couldn't run more than a 1/4 mile for the next 2 months due to the pain.  I shouldn't have started, and I sure shouldn't have finished.  Did I mention I was stubborn?

I was happy I'd completed my second marathon and that I'd done a proper training program, but I still felt like I had unfinished business.  I carried that feeling for many years.

*Interesting sidenote: one of the coaches for that program was a Texas A&M Student named Justin.  He had done an Ironman, which intrigued me.  I talked to him about it and he said he didn't really train that much, but just went out to see if he could do it.  Years later, I found out that Justin was Justin Daerr, who is now a professional triathlete.  His "i didn't train much" time was 12:55:03.  He's come a long way.  Check out his website.