2011 Run for the Ranch Marathon

This was my 3rd year of participating in the Run for the Ranch marathon. The first year I dropped at the half due to extremely cold weather. The weather was a perfect 51 at the start though there was a slight breeze. I wore my jacket in the beginning and that was a mistake. I got pretty hot and after two laps around the course I was ready to shed it. I had parked by the sidewalk on National and had to only move 5 feet off the course to throw my jacket in the trunk of my car. My strategy for the race was to run 3 minutes and walk 1 minute. Somewhere around the 10 mile mark I stepped into the grass and felt a twinge of discomfort shoot up my right leg and into my gluteus. I took some tylenol not too long after that and waited for it to kick in. I stayed on my plan to take a gel every loop (around every 35 minutes). I came through the halfway mark at 2:12 minutes and was hoping to be able to catch Susan and her friends that were running the Half marathon. They were using a 2 minute run, 1 minute walk strategy and I was starting to hope I could run with them. I finally caught up to them at the end of my 5th lap and we ran the 6th and 7th lap together. Susan was struggling a little and I didn't want to leave her behind so I ran with her until right before she finished. Susan let Sherry go since she was feeling fresh. I wanted to finish under 5 hours again and I had to really pick it up for the last lap to accomplish that. When I finished my legs were starting to cramp extremely. Susan was in as bad a shape as I was. She was very dizzy and felt like throwing up. After a few minutes to recover we got our food and got out of there. Rob drove home and by the time we got back to Republic I was able to down some Mt. Dew and my leg cramps were subsiding. Thanks to Dave Mari for taking some great pictures during the event.