monkey nonsense

wow! this weekend was the marine corps marathon in dc. it’s one of the largest marathons in the us.

i woke up kind of late and had to rush to rosslyn. it was actually pretty cool in the morning which made dressing kind of hard… i didn’t want to be hot later in the day, but i didn’t want to freeze early in the morning! plus, i wanted to be able to carry some stuff (not too much, just my cell phone really) while not being weighed down. in any case, around the mile 4/5 marker, as the course crossed the key bridge (and maybe as a result, the buildings/trees in VA stopped blocking the sun), it started warming up and i ran into people i knew! i felt so energized… i even sprinted a bit of the span of the bridge!!

… which i regretted later on. because then my legs were tired! i ended up walking up to the mile 9/10 marker… right around mariam’s old apartment. it was really cool, they were handing out oranges for runners to eat! and everyone was throwing the peels right on the floor after they finished. i saw one girl whose job was to sweep the peels to the side to prevent any runners from falling. it was about 2 hours into the race at this point in time and i was supposed to meet people at the mile 11 marker… having dawdled/walked (due to the sprint on the key bridge!), i had to pick up the pace. towards the end, i even sprinted down towards constitution to make it… it was kind of cool, i thought surely there would be no way i would run into the people i was looking for and yet, i ended up running right into them! of course, that’s after i wasted all my energy sprinting down to constitution.

… which was a bad idea again. i was sooo tired. at a little past mile 22, i had to sit down. i found a bench by the side of the course and just plopped down. i sat for about 5-10 minutes before i noticed bees were flying around me… i didn’t want to get stung so i got up again.

finally, at the finish line, it was ridiculously crazy!! first, i was sooo tired but the finish line was sooo far away… even up a small hill!! it was like a marathon just to get to the finish line and there were swarms of people to dodge… plus, at this point in time, i was really tired but kept having to run to catch up to the people i was with because they were moving much faster than me. every 5-10 seconds, i’d have to catch up… otherwise, they’d be out of my line of sight and it’d be crazy trying to find them later. in the end, we had to meet at the rosslyn metro in order to collect everyone… and then we stood/sat outside for a good half hour before deciding that it would take forever so we should just walk to the courthouse metro… about a 15-20 minute walk. but at this point in time, i was so exhausted!! we walked slowly and by the time we got to courthouse, we were able to get on a train and get back home.

where i proceeded to sleep until 5ish.

i got to say… it is SOOOO exhausting watching a marathon!! i don’t know how people do it! trying to chase after the runners you’re following… cramming onto a metro train just to make the next mile marker! and then… not even making it to the finish line in time to see them finish because the metro station is ridiculously crammed and the finish line soooo far away!! i think jenny finished as we were trying to exit the metro… and then by the time we had walked to the finish area (maybe like 10-15 minutes), bel had finished! and they looked less tired than simon, kevin, and me!! and we hadn’t even walked that much! here’s a map of my “marathon”… the lazy bum’s marathon… according to gmaps pedometer, i travelled a little over 3.5 miles… i know i know, it’s not quite 26.2 miles, but it’s pretty goo… ok, it’s a walk in the park compared to 26.2 miles.

i ran into jenny and bel by chance on the key bridge. at that point in time, i had been walking for … oh maybe 10 minutes? they had been running for close to a hour already (the marathon started at 8, but i’m sure they didn’t cross the start line until some time later). they had already covered 5 miles. i had covered… half a mile.. not even. i attempted to run along side them. bad idea. 3 steps later, i realized the futility in doing that. so i sprinted ahead… in hopes of getting a little in front of them so that i could yell and cheer as they passed me again. yeah… bad idea. i sprinted as fast as i could and yea… didn’t end up much ahead of them. in fact, they passed me seconds after i stopped sprinting.

about a hour later, they were approaching mile 11… and i was sprinting down the street to meet simon and kevin so i wouldn’t miss jenny and bel as they passed. i had covered about a mile in the time they covered 6…

when we finally situated ourselves at the 22 mile marker (metro was packed! it took us about 30 minutes to get there), they were approaching that mile marker… we only waited another 30some minutes before they ran past us.

and then they beat us to the finish line… despite us taking the metro!! we tried to walk out to the finish line in order to catch them finishing, but WHY DO YOU PUT THE FINISH LINE SO FAR AWAY from a metro station!? and so up-hilly!! jenny and bel ended up finishing, walking past us somehow, and were sitting by the metro station waiting for us to arrive! and both of them didn’t seem all that tired!!! crazy! 26.2 miles in a little over 4 hours… and they were still able to walk another 15 minutes to the farther metro station in order to get on!! i’m so impressed and inspired by them!! i might try to go run TWO miles… er, in the future some time.

congrats to jenny and bel for finishing their first marathon! and for making it look so effortless!!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 11:50 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.