Day two of the Marathon Maniacs reunion took place at the Servis Bank First Light Marathon in Mobile, Alabama.
I got a rather late start out of Jackson and drove the 3 1/2 hours to Mobile, getting to the packet pick up 15 minutes before they closed. I spoke to the Race Director, Marty O'Malley and got the info for our medal table and headed my tired butt to the Hampton Inn to get some rest for the next day!
There were a few people that had not received their bib stickers for their B2B medals, so I set up shop in the Hampton Inn lobby at 6:00am so any last minute folks could get them. The Hampton Inn had a really good breakfast out for the runners, so the lobby was quite busy.
So happy to see a couple of my favorite Maniacs Georges and Johnathan!
After breakfast, Steven Yee, Patti Krebsbach and I headed over to the start just in time for the official group photo.
Maniacs and Half Fanatics at the start!
A couple of Southern Bells and a Yankee at the start!
The First Light Marathon is one of the few marathons that are old school and does not have chip timing, so once the gun went off I started my Garmin and was off!
The run started off great. I had some good rest and the 800mg Ibuprofen I took before bed had my leg feeling very little soreness from the day before. I was not pushing the pace. I just wanted to treat this race like a nice and easy 26.2 mile recovery run. I thought I would walk more on this race, but ended up only walking a few steps of some of the bigger hills. The race just felt surprisingly easy.
The people of Mobile were so nice and with the warmer weather, there were quite a few spectators out.
I finished the race in 4:09:58 and placed 5th in my division. I was pretty happy with that as even with 2 long bathroom breaks, I was only 2 minutes off my previous PR before Mississippi Blues. This is giving me the confidence that my BQ might just happen this spring if I work hard.
I finished feeling great!
Each medal and plaque is decorated by a member of the L'Arche community. L'Arche Mobile is part of an international federation that people with intellectual disabilities. Our B2B Reunion medals were awesome too!
My Age Group Award!
After the race I met my friend Brian Wright and we headed back to Jackson, where I met up with a few friends for dinner, then headed back to my hotel for a good night's sleep before heading home the next day.
I really enjoyed planning this reunion and look forward to what is coming next!
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