I had the opportunity this morning to walk down the street and watch tens of thousands of people run past about the 12.5 mile point of the 2007 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC. Its quite an amazing experience, just watching. I can’t imagine running in it (particularly as I really dislike running.) There were so many runners that somehow, even with the runner tracking system on the marathon’s web site, we only found one of our three friends passing by.
A congrats goes out to friend of SiMP Rob Pegoraro who finished in 4:11:23. Also a congrats to my friends Andy and Alison Mullins who finished at 04:22:54 and 05:58:02 respectively. Of the 20622 finishers, Rob, Andy and Alison were 6210, 8075 and 18932. Quite an accomplishment for everyone. Again, congratulations. Many months of training and dedication went into making this happen.
Full race results are here.
October 29th, 2007
CONGRATS PEGO!! And well done on improving over last year’s time. You’re officially a psychotic runner-dude. You can quit now, if you’d like. You’re making the rest of us wanna=be athletes look bad.
The MCM needs a new tracking website or new software, or something. AWESOME idea – absolutely TERRIBLE execution. One of the mile markers was wrong, screwing up several of the pace/split times. It stopped reporting for nearly an hour, around the 3-hour mark (the critical last quarter or third of the race, for several of the folks I was tracking). My wife subscribed to their instant alerting feature, which proceeded to send her not less than FIFTEEN texts, letting her know her boss had reached the 19-mile marker – over the span of 2-hours!! I don’t think he was running in circles, or going back and forth over the same one-mile stretch, do you?? Considering he finished in 3:30, i’d gather he only passed it once. :-p And those were only a few of the many, many errors on incorrect reporting by this system. Awful, just awful.
October 29th, 2007
Thanks, guys! Finishing a marathon is an incredible experience–if you can, get a spot by the finish line and watch the expressions on the faces of people running to the finish. (In my case, you also would have heard me yelling my head off as I attacked the last hill. It’s a surprisingly effective way to shut out pain for minute or so
Now give me a day or so to heal up, and I won’t look like a 90-year-old man when I go up and down stairs.
- RP