I flew in the Citites on Saturday, where my friends took me out for a relaxing day of canoeing on the beautiful St. Croix River. This was a prefect way to stay horizontal and stay relaxed before the race. The next morning, I walked for a couple of miles down to the Metrodome, where more than 8,000 people gathered at the start in a 32 degree weather with no wind. In a word, it was a perfect race day.

tcm1.jpg	tcm2.jpg	tcm3.jpg
tcm4.jpg	tcm5.jpg	tcm6.jpg

This being my third time marathon, I was determined to use my head more than my body -- I'm sure, my age (37) had something to do with it, too. I am glad to tell you that I ran the way I imagined it before the race, which was to run slower the first 15 miles and try to keep up my pace the last 11 miles. I also stuck with fast-walking for one minute at every mile post.

This strategy really paid off at Mile 21, where a 2 mile stretch of gradual uphill challenged us. Even here, with some 8,000 runners participating, I had just the right amount of people surrounding me. It was not too crowded, but I always had people passing me, I passed a few, and jog along with others. I could feel the energy feeding off each other, and that was very encouraging.

The weather stayed perfect -- mid 50s by the time I finished it. Mile breeze, clear sky, leaves turning yellow, lots of people by the roadside. I had the tanktop and shorts with a Glad garbage bag over it, so they nicknamed me "Bag man" or "Garbage man" or whatever. In hindsight, I should have worn a garbage bag with the Pumpkin design. Maybe I will do it next year.

One glitch I encountered was that they ran out of Gatorade for slow runners (I ran 4:31) early on, and I did not get to it until Mile 20. At midpoint, I started to become concerned that my muscles will start to cramp up and that distracted my focus a little bit. Fortunately, this realization forced me to keep my pace down, and the cool weather also must have helped as I was able to finish without major problems.