Yesterday, I ran my first Marathon. I survived. And that is the best thing I can say about the experience. It was exciting, fun, exhausting, absolutely miserable, worse than miserable, and finally over, in that order.

I had trained pretty well for the race, with a long run of 29 miles four weeks before race day. I felt good, despite a pulled muscle three weeks before the race (I recovered well from that injury, so I don’t think it had a major impact on my performance). Unfortunately, race conditions were not good – a temperature of 65F at race start and nearly 80F by the end. It was mostly cloudy, but there was enough sun out that I finished the day with a sunburned face. If you haven’t done any long running, let me tell you that this is at least 20 degrees too hot. But even more than the temperature, it was my race strategy that did me in.

Ask any marathoner for race advice and the first thing out of their mouth will be “Don’t start out too fast.” I knew this. But for your first marathon, how do you know how fast is too fast? I found out with great certainty what too fast was for me. I guessed that I could do a half-marathon that day in 1:55, so I slowed down my pace from there and crossed the half-way point at 2:05. That turned out to be way too fast. By the 15 mile point I was starting to feel spent. By the 18 mile point I was in trouble – I began walking more than I was running. At 24 miles, I thought death could not come too soon. I walked the rest of the way, running only the last 0.1 mile to cross the finish line. My time: 4 hours, 59 minutes. I started the race thinking I could do 4:20.

Their were 422 men aged 45 – 49 who finished the marathon. The median time for that group was 4:46, so I didn’t meet my goal of being in the ‘fast’ half. The winner, by the way, finished in 2:14:39. None of these stats make me feel good. But I finished (alive), so at least the primary goal was accomplished. They say you never forget your first (marathon), but I’m hopeful for some selective forgetting about yesterday.

And things could have been worse. I was saved at mile 21 by a true act of friendship. But I’ll tell that story later. For now, I think I’ll take a nap.