The guys dropped Caroline, Marit and I pretty quickly, but we had a great time riding hard and trying to avoid a couple nasty swarms of grasshoppers.
This is the only shot of Ian I got all weekend. I am blaming all the sweat on the camera for the blurriness. If you were not already aware, Ian is a rockstar. Flat out, plain and simple there is no other way to put it. He hammered the Henshaw loop Saturday and then got up at 4:15am Sunday morning to go down to the marathon and run the final 20 miles with me. In fact I had so much fun running with him that I made him promise to pace me someday when I try to break 3 hours.
The marathon was fun. I ran into my friend Megan and her husband before the race and we hung out a bit before the gun went off. I had no plan except to to stick my heart rate where it would be for a training run and leave it there the whole time. No checking splits, no worrying about times, etc. Ian hopped in at mile six and we clipped off miles and had a blast. At mile 20 some kids were handing out Otter Pops. Best race food EVER!!At mile 24 I looked at a race clock, did some elementary math and realized we were going to come in really close to my PR. Ian had known my PR as well. We never talked about trying to hit it, but I picked up the pace just a tad and there was some sort of telepathy between us because he knew exactly what was going on. I passed mile 26 in 3:09 and laughed because I knew I wouldn't break my PR with the remaining 0.2 miles. I finished in 3:10:31, 5 seconds shy of my PR. I could not be happier with the result.
I'll post some pics of Ian and I racing later, but I'm going to leave you with a shot of my friend Big Dave. He also falls into the rock star classification, but not only because of his outfit. I think he might have had the fastest "Elvis" finishing time as well. A big congrats also to Jeffrey for breaking 3 and Becky for an awesome PR!
