Mission Accomplished

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for the results. First a little background. You all know that I have been training for the Whistlestop Marathon since Jan 2009. The seed for the race was planted at Whistlestop 2008. At that event, I, and 2 other members of my bowling team ran the half marathon distance. Yep, not your typical bowling team. Anyway, after the run we were a little bored, so we went golfing.

A couple weeks later we were discussing how fun it was and we decided that we should run the full Marathon the following (2009) year. And we should golf again. And somehow we decided to turn it into a screwball triathalon. Run, Golf, Bowl. At this point Tad (former college sprinter) had run 2 marathons previously. Bob and I had run zero (0) marathons combined.

The problem of how to score such diverse events l00med. Finally I had the storming brain. First, overall low score wins. The winner of a given event gets zero(0) points for that event and the other two get points based on how far he is behind the winner. Thus.
Marathon: One(1) point for each minute behind winner.
Golf: One(1) point for each stroke behind winner.
Bowling: One(1) point for pin behind winner.

If you think about this puts a heavy weight on bowling. Which is as it should be. It is the event we are the most equally matched in, it comes last, and has the most potential for someone to make up ground.

Well the Marathon is not to be taken lightly. I really wanted to run in under 4 hrs. so developed a plan. Run the first ten miles in 1:25 mins, next ten miles in 1:35 (3hrs total), run 6.2 miles in under an hour. Actual results....... first ten miles in 1:24, next ten miles in 1:31 (2:55 total), last 6.2 in 59 mins. My official time 3:54:58.1 and yes the last 6.2 miles reeeeeaaaaalllly sucked. I thot I trained for everything. Legs were tired but strong. Heart/Lungs not even working hard. But about mile 21 my core musckles started to give way. Thats right. My abs, back, and rib muscles started to ache so bad, I couldn't hold myself upright and my form broke down. I hadn't read about that anywhere and hadn't prepared for it. I'll have to werk on that for my next one.

Anyway Tad ran in 3:11 which put me 43 points behind.
Golf put me further behind (I suck at golf).
We all stunk at bowling that day (unfamiliar lanes/fatigue/etc) but Bob stunk least enuff to make a huge comback and win the triathalon.

Saturday was 1 Marathon (my first), 18 holes of golf (my second round of the year), 4 games of bowling(not publishing our scores, they were bad), 7 beers, 2 shots Wild Turkey. Congrats to Bob for winning the triathalon, to Tad for qualifying for Boston Marathon. All in all a great day even tho I lost.

Mumblingsages did well in the 10k and is thinking about entering the triathalon next year. How about you?