John Costigan [Bib # ?], [City], [State]

The Army has an infantry saying what happened yesterday in the MCM marathon $\ldots$ It's called an L-Shaped ambush.

First, my race. I ran very well and competitively yesterday posting a 3:29:55 (haven't looked up the official time but pretty close to that). Ran even splits, plus or minus 15 seconds. I would have preferred a 3:29 (under 8 minutes a mile) or 3:25 (qualifying for '99 Boston marathon...already qualified for '98 marathon), but it was only a training run! Brian W $\ldots$ Time for my speedwork!

A number of first $\ldots$ First time I ran an official race FOR TRAINING!!! (Note $\ldots$ I usually run 6-8 marathon distance (26.2-30 miles) runs a year for training). First time I ran 24 miles for training without stopping. And, first time I trained over 25 miles in the rain. I still have a number of things to do before my planned 100 miler like run at night and run over 20 miles at night, so I'm still pretty immature at that level. In all honesty, I did not push it and when my calf started getting stiff, I walked if off at the 24 mile marker and on (Remember $\ldots$ Training, NOT to get hurt). I have to admit, that it took all of my mental energies to keep this run a training run versus a race. It took all of my Army Ranger training to ignore the wet conditions and cold.

Now, the bad news.

For first time runners, this was a terrible marathon. The weather conditions were not conducive to anything. These weather conditions were for survival runs. The heavy rains at the beginning took too much of a toll on runners. At the 20 mile marker, I was passing people by the hundreds (why they were in front of me in the first place I'll never know). As my wife and I drove off to go home at 4 hours into the the race, I was embarrassed that so many fine runners were still running and would still be running for another few hours. I was embarrassed because I could not be there to help them (the place was an utterly disgusting pile of mud at the end for spectators). Although not close to hyperthermia or exhaustion myself, I was forced to retire to my warm car so that I could be well to run another day (and, shortly too, as my marathon schedule has many marathons and an ultra in the next 8 weeks).

To all my running friends, we will relive this marathon forever. To all who finished, my hats off. To all that tried, my hats are off.

I will discuss the social features of this weekend in another thread (and, we had a Great Time!!!) but one thing I wanted to say: I attended a Penguin Dinner/RW Forum dinner Saturday night and the guest speaker (someone that had run 21 straight MCM marathons said that "We all have the same level of fitness going into this marathon," or something to that effect. He was wrong but sort of right. No level of physical fitness for a first marathon could prepare you for the mental agony that entailed this marathon. I had a decided edge of most runners in that I was able to block out the physical conditions the same way I blocked out the torture of the cold water during the Alcatraz triathlon or the 8th hour of a survival 50 mile race.

God bless everyone that tried this race, especially for 1st time runners.