I felt more anxious about running this race than normal. Having an injured heal and no training left alot of unknowns to consider, but I got the fever so I jogged down to the start from my house at 6:30am. Met James and Matt, both in good spirits and Kris showed up to cheer us on after running the Mac yesterday on a sprained ankle. I planned to run with Matt, but I missed him at the start. The weather was cool but comfortable and I ran a 7:35 for the first mile, then spent the next two miles slowing down to 8:00 per mile. Matt started with a 8:20 mile, but caught up to me around mile 7 - it was great running with Matt, I kept him from going too fast and he kept me from going too slow. We ran steady though the rolling hills, staying within 10 seconds of a 8 mile/min pace. Everything was fine until the hill at Woodard Bay at mile 15, I couldn't keep up with Matt and let him go. I felt a bout of diarreah coming so I started to really look forward to the porta-potti at mile 18. Of course when I got there, the guy in front of me jumped in first so I had to wait 1.5 min. for him to get out! seemed like an eternity. With that done I took off feeling great, and started picking off people. My friend Bruce Olson showed up on his motorcycle and escorted me the rest of the way. It was great to have someone to talk to again. Unfortunately, around mile 20, my heal pain flared up again. I felt great, but had to slow down and start a running limp. My hopes for qualifying for Boston went down the drain, but my goal for the day was just to finish anyway. I ate another gu at mile 24 and ran comfortably to the finish. My time, though slow was a marathon pr for me since my surgery, by about 2 min.! One of these days I'll get back to my sub 3:30 times. James had a great race, winning his age group and 7th overall in 2:53 I think, Matt finished in 3:37 slowed by leg pains. What a great day! I felt like I could run another 10 miles. It was great to see the Oly trail runners at the finish. I hope I can heal up in time for Lake Youngs.

Since hurting my heal two weeks ago, I haven't run till last thursday. An easy run with our trail running group in Priest Point Park went well with no soreness afterward. So I ran my normal 6 mile around the lake route again with no pain. So today, I ran a little over 7 miles on the marathon course with only minor soreness. I think I'm at about 75%. Either I'm 3/4 healed or will last only 20 miles, hard to say. At least I feel good enough to run the marathon at an 8 min/mile pace until I finish or something goes wrong...

For some odd reason, while I've been sitting around waiting for my achilles injury to heal. I got it in my head that I need to run our local Capitol City Marathon! I was going down to Oregon to run MacDonald Forest 50K, but now I'd just rather stay put and suffer through the local marathon. I figure I have about a 20% chance of having an enjoyable race. I have run 16 miles of the course, but it was the first time I've run over 8 miles on pavement this year. Now I'm sitting around not running and the race is in 2 weeks. Oh well, maybe my heel will not heal in time...