Seattle marathon
We left our flat at 7:30 with l_sylvanas and hit traffic jam at Broad street (where I imagine whole bunch of marathoners-to-be were struggling to get to runner's corral). Instead of standing in line I took off and walked a couple of blocks, as a result I was a bit too early at the start line. The weather was quite typical Seattle's drizzle with sky so close to Earth that some could question if the process mentioned in the beginning of Genesis was ever finished completely. Also it was quite cold and I had to hide in all the layers of clothing I had on me (2 runners T's, my pretty warm one and marathon branded, turtleneck, wind jacket, gloves, and headband). Legs were feeling better (maybe from my walk, maybe from anticipation), and it became much warmer when they let people to come into corral right before the start. I guess sheep analogy is obvious.
A couple of fun runners this marathon: guy dressed like Elvis (heck, that probably was Elvis) who wanted to break Guinness book record of fastest marathon ran by, eh, Elvis; other guy ran barefoot; and yet another ran his 600+ marathon.
Oh well, the horn blew and the crowd started to run, if you can call it running - took me about 15 seconds to get to real starting line, which was about 10 meters away. Almost immediately I started to feel warmer and first took the turtleneck off and then wrapped my jacket around the waist. First marathon quarter I ran at pretty good pace, leaving 4 hour group behind, hitting little south of 9 minutes/mile (9m9s/m was posted as 4 hours pace), and doing that just fine until point 8 from my May 4th post had happened and when I was returning from Mercer island I felt deep and severe abdominal pain. Maybe the pace was a bit too high for me. I only felt such a pain once, at the last mile of my 18-miler, and that was only at the left side, today both sides were in pain. First I just slowed down, but the pain didn't stop and then I had to walk. Even though it calmed down I never recovered from the feeling that something just isn't good down there and as result 4 hour group first caught up with me at half point (hitting a tiny bit less than 2 hours) , overtook me, and then disintegrated into the void. Third quarter was the worst one. At times I had to walk and catch my breath, at times I ran, quite slowly. At some point I felt that I'm getting a blister on my right heel and was fast to put some bandage on, losing a couple of minutes, but winning a no blister condition in the end. First half of the last quarter was very hilly, so I decided to walk uphill and run down, which, surprisingly, worked quite good for me and the feeling that something is just wrong dropped a bit.
I hit 23 miles in better shape than I was for preceding 10 miles and was inspired by one of volunteers who said "it's all downhill from here". Shortly after I met vlad_0x7bb (whom I saw about a mile ahead at the bridge switchback @7MP) with whom we ran for a while. His story was similar to mine, only he was running with 3:45 group and burned out. I continued to the finish line, with only a single walk (which was uphill, so the guy @23MP was cheating) for 50 or so meters, and crossed it to be greeted and congratulated by l_sylvanas. I got my medal, some food, lots of water and we went to our car, taking elevators wherever we could.
I improved my Vancouver marathon time (hitting my second goal: "improve my time" with first being "finish the marathon") by 58 minutes. It took me 1:59:55 to finish the first half and 2:26:09 the second with official time 4:26:03 as my new record.