Another marathon in the books
 

I ran the Pocatello Marathon this past weekend, the one I was doing in honor of the soldier that died in Iraq. As far as that aspect, it went great. The newspaper found out about it, and I was one of a handful of runners who were profiled in the paper on Sunday.

As far as the race goes, I started strong, and then slammed into the wall at mile 21. I ran the first half of the race in 1:49, and felt really good about turning in a 3:45 effort, which would be a couple minute PR for me. Then I developed a quarter sized blister on my right heel which filled up with blood and popped. So the last 5.2 miles took a long time. It turned out that the second half took me 2:04, and my time overall was 3:53. Good enough for 69th place out of 243 runners, 8th in my age group out of 19. So not a total loss, but a bit disappointing.

So I am done with race training for at least the rest of this year. It's going to be running for fun 3x a week, mountain bike riding and hitting the gym for some classes with my wife. Around the first of next year I'm planning on getting some coaching and see if I can get my marathon time down a bit.

Wow, congrats on even finishing in that situation.

What? No pictures? Wasn't one of your first CG posts a picture of a blister you were considering popping?

Nice work on the marathon. Thats a very good time.

So did you have any soft spots show up on any training runs recently? Because you've been putting in some long runs the last couple of months.

Alright...you asked for it.

http://www.shaneb.net/images/100_4329.jpg
This is the aftermath. Doesn't hurt much now.

I also found the little blurb about me that was in the paper, if anyone cares:

Shane Bauman

Shane Bauman got a little choked up when asked about his reason for running the ISJ Pocatello Marathon. One look at his shirt told why.

Bauman, from Utah, made a shirt with Blake Stephens' name, rank, death date and the words ''Rest in Peace.'' More importantly, he dedicated the marathon to Stephens, a Century High School graduate who was killed in Iraq in May.

Stephens dated Bauman's wife's sister in high school, and Stephens used to borrow his girlfriend's family's video camera to record him and his friends around town.

While recently watching the videos, Bauman thought about what he could for Stephens.

''You know, he was really a good guy. So I wanted to do something for him,'' Bauman said. ''I wrote to Blake's parents and asked them if I could do this for him, and they said it would be OK. He'd actually been training to do it.''

Bauman dedicated the first 25 miles of the run to Stephens, who died as a 25-year-old soldier.

''I thought about him the whole time,'' Bauman said. ''My only regret is that I couldn't run it faster.''

http://www.idahostatejournal.com/art...ing/news07.txt

Nasty looking blister, but nice write-up in the article.

So who was the last 1.2 miles dedicated to?

I told the reporter that miles 1-25 were for each year of his life, mile 25-26.2 was for his family. That part didn't make it into print.

very cool

Impressive Shane! That blister looks nasty but adds to your marathon cred I'm sure. That was a classy thing you did and I'm sure the family appreciated it.