My goal was to break 4 hours in the marathon. So logically, my strategy was to follow the pace setter with the 4-hour white balloon. There were a few dozen of us who seemed to have the same plan. I tried to stay pretty close, but realized after just a few kilometers that white-balloon-guy’s pace was too fast. Besides that, he wasn’t saying a word to encourage us. So I let white-balloon-guy go and little by little the gap widened between me and him. By the time he hit the halfway mark and started the second loop, he was more than 6 minutes ahead of schedule. I lost sight of him soon after that. That’s when I noticed that nothing looked familiar. My eyes had been riveted on white-balloon-guy the first time around. Now I was on a 5-kilometer stretch of the course that zigzagged through a part of the city where the only spectators were a few scattered volunteers. I was virtually alone. In fact, I was completely alone when I made a wrong turn! I saw my error pretty quickly and backtracked, but I was not happy to have added an extra couple hundred yards to my marathon! I caught up with and passed white-balloon-guy 3 kilometers from the finish line. My official race time was 3:55.36. I’m proud to say that makes me a Boston qualifier!
To be continued…
To be continued…
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