P.F. Chang’s Rock n Roll Marathon 2010

This note is intended as a reminder so that I know what to expect next year. Any references to abortions, scantly clad women, etc are purely not intentional but does make this note intended for mature audiences only.

It’s ironic that the last time I physically felt this bad; I was in fact eating a bad batch of chicken lettuce wrap ups at PF Chang's. I should mention that even explosive diarrhea can’t keep me away from their Great Wall of Chocolate…but I digress…

So let’s get my time out of the way. I ran the first half at a kind of slow 2:10…and the second half was a painful three hours. It wasn’t even a situation where one bad thing after another happened. It was more like three bad things happening at the same time until some new pain creeped in.

I decided to sign up for this marathon a few days after running the Chicago Marathon in October. I honestly shouldn’t have gone more than a 10k today…but then what would I bitch about?

--The expo was good. It was a little creepy with all of the promotional people attacking you as you walked down the isles. It reminded me shopping in Nogales (Mexico), except the promotional people were all pretty and clean and the dudes in Nogales are not clean and want to harvest my organs.

--I showed up early to the race so that I could watch The Ultra Marathon Man Dean Karnazes run the marathon with a few other people as an “ultra.” They ran 4.8 miles and then jumped in and ran the regular marathon. In all of his books and running magazines he’s like super buff and stuff…but in person he was 4’11” and probably weighed 90lbs.

--I started too far up in the staging corals and ended up with the end of the 3 hour group. So of course I went out too fast…which is not a good idea when running 26.2 miles.

--The first two miles we were greeted by cheerleaders and a band. Not a bad way to start things.

--Overall the race would have been quiet almost the entire time if not for all of the different cheer squads. The best group of students ended up being the group at mile 12. They were all dressed up as superheroes! I got water from the Green Lantern.

--The race drink was Cytoplex or Cytomax or something like that. Not as good as the heavy duty Endurance Gatorade…but a gajillion times better than that horrid Tucon based Xood!

--Most of the bands were pretty okay along the route. The only two that were horrible were the high school garage bands. For the love of God, the only one that should be butchering a Bruce Springsteen song is the Boss himself!

--At mile three we were “greeted” by a group of Right To Life people showing us signs depicting abortions! Because everyone knows that marathon runners are always getting rid of babies after the race. I think I offended them because I was wearing the shirt* from my sponsor “The Fetus Killers.” Hopefully someday we can all just get along…

--At the 10k point, I was about 2 ½ minutes ahead of where I wanted to be. That’s also the time that we saw this young lady runner that was wearing lace underwear over her lace tights. I…I…I honestly don’t remember much else until sometime around mile 9…

--Around mile 9 my bad knee got worse. It started to get as big as a softball. I’m not a doctor but I have pretended to be one on several occasions.

--At the ½ marathon point I was at an exact 10 minute pace. The bad thing is that I noticed that my left leg started twitching and then locked up from my hip to my knee. Again, not a doctor but…

--I hobbled most of the rest of the race.

--One of the nice things that a few spectators did was hand out Kleenex. Oh yea, did I mention that I couldn’t breathe? A lot of people were hacking up stuff. Still not as gross as those Right to Life freaks.

--At mile 20 I had a priest jump out and scream at me. I think he was trying to motivate me. It reminded me of my days as an altar boy…but that’s a story for another time…

--At mile 23 the “5 hour pace team” passed me and some dudes I was running with. As soon as they passed we all looked at each other and let out a collective “F**K!!”

--At mile 24 there’s a huge ass hill. Who thought THAT was a good idea????

--With a mile to go I caught some lady that wasn’t wearing shoes. I totally beat her at the end. Take THAT shoeless lady! At least I think she was a runner…

--The latest stats show that 15,000 runners were expected to run the marathon. 8,000 showed up and only 5,691 of us finished. 50,000 runners were expected to run the 1/2 marathon. 25,000 showed up and only 21,460 finished.

--The nail on my big toe is turning black and will probably fall off. I'll make sure to include pictures when this happens...


*This of course is not true. I wasn’t even wearing a shirt. The Right to Life people thing was real though. Those freaks just scare me.
**UC