Remembering.

Leslie Sheard third from right.

I lost something this year; my last link back to the second world war with the passing of my grandfather, from what I guess could be charitably called "old age".

I have always known he served in the war, there was a picture of an RN destroyer displayed in their house, not in pride of place but neither was it hidden away in some dusty corner. Other than the bare bones facts; yes I was there, I served on that ship, he never really spoke about it. Wise, I think, given that we were just children and unlikely to understand anything at all and be all to ready to concentrate instead on the "glory".

As an adult I saw him less and less, a function both of moving physically further and further away from Leeds; London, Aberdeen, Virginia, Nova Scotia, as well as moving further emotionally away from Leeds too. However, when I would go back to Leeds, I would always stay at Grandpa's and we would play cards late into the night and I would listen him talk, and some of that talk would be about his war.

He was an "Hostilities Only" sailor who tried to enlist almost as soon as Chamberlin had finished his famous declaration ".... (we are) at war with Germany" but they sent him back home, saying come back again in the Spring. So he did. He says his choice of the RN was based on the fact that he disliked both heights and walking, which automatically excluded the RAF and the Army, leaving only the Navy. He may also have been influenced his father, Walter, who served in a very nascent Fleet Air Arm in the first war. He used to swim out to buoys to moor flying boats! Grandpa's brother, Norman, clearly had no problems walking, enlisted in the Army and ended up in tanks. Family lore says he was among the first into Belsen, an experience that he never spoke of.

Grandpa served as Able Seaman Leslie Sheard on the Hunt Class destroyer HMS Southdown, pennant number L25; an inshore escort ship which was about the length of the garden he eventually owned on Perth Mount in Leeds.

HMS Southdown spent the war escorting convoys in the North Sea and in the English Channel. I looked her up on-line and, in an interesting connecting piece of Halifax congruity, in 1941 she was involved in a collision with HM Corvette Shearwater! They'd meet Atlantic convoys, including those from Halifax, near the Scottish Isles and escort them down the North Sea to London, a stretch of water known as E-Boat alley, due to it's proximity to occupied Europe.

Despite leaving school at 13, his work experience down the market left him with a surprising degree of numeracy and literacy, and his position on ship in stores and involved with telegraphy reflected this. However, when someone started shooting at them, they all shot back! I heard stories of being torpedoed but the ship's draft was so shallow the fish passed harmlessly underneath them. Or of being strafed and taking cover behind a ready magazine on deck. This last story was a favourite one between him and Jeanne, my Grandmother. "But Leslie" she would ask "why would you hide behind ammunition when someone was shooting at you?". "Jeanne" he would always reply with a smile "because it was the thickest thing on the deck" and they would both laugh.

Grandma would tell stories too, of the AA gun and searchlight outside their house in Cookridge (one of the highest points in the area and given the accuracy of bombers, distressingly close to a steel foundry at Kirkstall) and taking the air-raid wardens on duty cups of tea. Or of the relative luxury the sailors lived in in those times of rationing. Eggs, she said, they had eggs! And tinned fruit!

I wonder about their war-time relationship. She was only 16 when hostilities broke out, he was 20. They were married in '42. He was away from '40 to '45 and one imagines that for most of those five years, including three as a young bride, she had no idea where he was or what he was doing. Contrast that to today, where tweets and blogs can be sent daily to update the world or your loved ones on the minutiae of your life. Or where people get upset if you don't reply immediately to an email or text. They were unable to even say with any degree of confidence where he was, other than that it was a-sea and in harms' way.

Their generation was born out of the first war; Grandma's father, Percy, served on the Western Front in the trenches, which according to family lore is where he met my great-grandmother, Louise, a French nurse. However Percy, they say, was a bit of an arty Francophile before the war, so it is possible he met her then. Whatever the truth, what is indisputable is that he was an English lad, and she was a French mademoiselle and under the normal course of events in the early 20th Century, by rights they shouldn't have met. I didn't hear too many Percy and Louise stories; they both passed before I was born, and I suppose their history was pretty much gone already as no-one had written their stories down before they died with them. I did hear how Louise became the terror of Leeds Market, going down late on a Saturday afternoon and haggling for left-over fruits, vegetables and meats in a very French, and very un-Yorkshire-like, manner. Or of shooing the local kids off their freshly scrubbed doorstep with a Gallic "allez allez".

Grandpa told me other war-stories as well, of D-Day, of life on board, of his COs, as we would play cribbage long into the night (crib being a Navy legacy). By this time in his life, his SDAT was of a level he was unable to remember if we'd pegged once or twice around the board but it didn't matter. We just played hand after hand after hand and went around and around the board and he'd carry on talking. To be honest, the war and his life as a barrow-boy down the Leeds market finding exotic spiders in crates of bananas probably seemed clearer in his mind than what he'd had for breakfast.

As with most hostilities only personnel, he was only too keen to reintegrate into civilian life. He demobbed in late '45; my mother was born in November '46 (do the math!). The picture of HMS Southdown on the wall notwithstanding, he never really referred to it. In later life he took a renewed interest in the Navy, joined the RNA and paraded proudly at the local cenotaph on Remembrance day with his medals.

Despite being a member of the proverbial thin red line who ensured the second language we all learned at school was French, he wouldn't class himself as a hero. He was in his own view an ordinary man doing an ordinary job. Just a bloke from working class Leeds who "did his bit". However, they were extraordinary times. He was a hero to me. I miss him.

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White after Labour Day?

Cyclocross really beats a bike up. Well, that is to say it really beats my bike up. Old Bess is a real trooper but 'cross leaves her just as, if not more, battered and bruised than me.

Fortunately, Old Bess is old school and hence is all about cup-and-cone bearings that even a mechanical klutz like me can fix. All it takes are a couple of pretty generic spanners per item, some patience and you're off to the races.

Just as I'm swiftly becoming a martyr to my knees, Old Bess is a martyr to her head-set and wheels. The head-set is an old-fashioned threaded one, but is an n=1 for having the prototype "self unscrewing" headset; it seems whatever I (or the various mechanics at Cyclesmith who've tried) do, the lock-nut unscrews itself in short order. Old Bess has a threaded-to-threadless headset adapter and so I just got a spare washer which I will place between the locknut and the brake-hanger. Hopefully now, the only way the locknut can work loose is if it can push the brake-hanger off the stem!

Next the wheels. These aren't weirdo prototype self-unscrewing ones. No magic here, they're just old and creaky and prone to the wobbles after too much exercise. Just like my knees.

I keep on having to strip them out, espcially the front one. It looks like the bearing cone is got a ding; no wonder I can't keep it in line.

There's something satisfying about doing your own bike mechanics, even if it means trying to keep track of what feels like a zillion ball-bearings.

As long as you can keep track of them and one doesn't go and roll under the washing machine or something then you can just re-pack it and reverse the steps to get a working wheel.

I decided to bling Old Bess up a little for this season. I picked up a pair of Vittoria cross tyres on sale at Ski Velo in Magog last July. They were 50% off so how could I not?

I just put them on and as you can see, they are a fetching shade of off-white.

Not the best colour for 'cross perhaps, given the copious amounts of mud, but they do bling out Old Bess nicely, and complement her eyes, or at least her decals.

I was taken by the "mounting instructions"

Which in case you can't make that out say that "to gravel, and glass; these may damage the casing of the tyre". Which us ironic seeing as these are off-road tyres. Can you imagine the whole field stopped at the entrance to the straightaway on Sunday saying "I can't go down there; the mounting instructions on my tyres say I could damage them if I go down there".

What do you think Too much perhaps? No white tyres after Labour Day?

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Cross #1

Awesome; wool jerseys, optional bunch-of-banana leather helmets (as long as your pompadour didn't get in the way) and truly epic, rather than Rapha-epic, water-obstacles. It didn't quite look like this last Sunday, but there was some bike-chuckitude going on and it seemed as muddy.

It was grey and wet. Warm though. When we drove down Novalea to park I was surpirsed at how many cars there were already there. The tally at the end of the day would be 52 starters; 3 U16, 3 women and 46 guys. That compares nicely to a regular BNS road event. This event got out some extras though; your's truly for example and a couple of triathletes a road-race might not normally see. I saw Norm Lai there as well as Gerrad Lewin. The last time I saw Gerrad in a mass-start bike race type of event it was the Coteau du Lac Continental Cup (I was on a motorbike!). Afterward we both agreed this was about as far from am ITU race as you could get!

I didn't get a chance to pre-ride the course, although it was immediately obvious it was not the course I'd been training on; it was clockwise for start, going up the hills I'd been riding down and taking some decidedly "sporting" lines! Some of the delay was signing on. I have to say, we got a nice Sugoi tech t-shirt for the series; the running joke was "buy the $25 T-shirt and race for free".

Some of the delay was getting son Daniel ready.

At what point do you expect your children to zip-tie on their own numbers? Sometime after taking off the training wheels but before, say, junior high? It's just one of the unique conundrums of the endurance sport parent!

We were a bit flustered to find the kids would start with the adults, do the same course (with one tiny alteration to take them around and not over the barriers) and do it for the same time (40 minutes). Dan seemed to take this in his stride better than I did!

Dan and I were lined up with James McMillin and his son Shamus, one of the other kids in the race. I realized that not only had I not pre-ridden the new course, I still had the frame-pump on the bike and I hadn't taken any pressure out of my tires (still at 80 psi). I chucked my pump into the bushes without a moment to spare and that close to the gun I wasn't going to start fiddling with the valve-stems!

We were in the middle of that lot. I'd been "here" before; Dan had not!

A few days previously Java Jim Diakos asked me how the grass was. Good for now, I said, but do the math; 30 riders with 2 tyres each is 60 tyres, 10 laps each is 600 tyre tracks; Sunday's going to be messy! The grass was OK on Wednesday when it had just been me, but on Sunday after yet more rain and nearly 50 guys (minus me) taking practice laps, it was getting squirrelly and we hadn't even started yet.

I crashed a few hundred metres into the first lap; no amount of tread when you're at 80psi was going to be able to hold the line I tried to take on the single-track after the apple-tree. That set the tone for the race. I was going off-line a lot to try and keep some traction. I didn't crash too many more times, and most of them were prat-falls or foot-dabbing. I only found myself on the ground in genuine surprise a couple more times.

After a few laps I caught Dan. Now this is a strange sensation; to lap your own son. Yes, yes, I know, in a few years he'll be lapping me but even so, kicking the shit out of a 10 year-old, any ten year-old whether he's yours or not; not cool.

Dan was having a crap time. The mud was taking it's toll on everyone, but it had Dan in a right state. He was literally crying in frustration. The hills were steep, they were muddy and he couldn't walk up one of them, much less ride. His rear brake was jammed (stupid v-brakes) and so the descents were, for him, white-knuckle terror. What do you do?

You stop, you give him a big hug and tell him it's going to be OK.

All the guys I'd spent the last two laps fighting against to get past went past in a flurry of mud. So what? At the end of the series I will have dropped two or three laps minimum to Espy, the series leader and so by race 4 I will be 10 or 12 laps down, or one whole race! Besides, this is a pure 'B' race, strictly for fun.

I rode a bit of a lap with him, shepherded him down off the ridge, around the barriers, I even crashed in front of him doing a dismount on the hill (which was way too muddy for anyone to ride up) and although unintended was my way of saying "look, it's happening to me too!".

It doesn't look much but it was steep and slippery. Plus I cracked a rib here last year and tend to treat it with respect nowadays!

You know, I told him he could stop if he wanted. Maybe take a time-out at the end of the lap, have a breather and go back out if he felt like it. After stopping with him I told the time-keepers he should probably be pulled out. When La Belle showed up after her run, I told her that he should probably DNF this one and she said she'd look after it. So guess what? They all tried to pull him after three laps and he flatly refused. He said he was going on.

Afterwards as I gave him some juice and chocolate (everything looks better after juice and chocolate) I told him that I was very proud. The attribute that means the most to me isn't winning, it's giving all that you have, quite often meaning going well outside your comfort zone. Sometimes this means carrying on in the face of adversity, when you don't want to. When you invoke the Jens "Shut up legs" voice. I know that Dan has a low frustration threshold and have seen many things thrown across the room and called "stupid" because he couldn't master it the first time. Yet on Sunday he kept on coming back again and again and again. He never cleared the carry; I'm pretty sure it put him face-first in the mud every time, but he came back to do it four more times. That's determination.

I also tried to tell him that the conditions were as bad as I had seen them, and what he perceived as his own crapness was, in fact, felt by everyone during that race.

I was joking at the end about Dan that "that was a character-building experience", but all jokes aside, I think it was.

As I was telling him this, many of the grown-ups came over to him, and the other kids too, and congratulated them all for toughing out what had been one of the worse 'cross races in years. Now, that's class!

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Photos from Ian Loughead and EWoQ.

Musical Spokes

Ever have one of those rides that wasn't meant to happen?

Tried to sneak out for an hour today; it was all the time I had. Decided on Purcell's Cove; a self-contained 1hr loop. Plus, with six/seven/eight climbs (depending on how you're counting) in ten kilometers it was going to be a good maintainence-ride for 'cross, which is nothing if not constantly going up and down like a demented two-wheel, pneumatically-tyred, white-knuckle ride roller-coaster.

At the far end of the loop, by the now rebuilt store in Herring Cove, a rear spoke went twang! Not so much due to my awesome power of my thighs as the awesome lardiness of my thighs. Grrr. It was drive-side, of course it was drive-side, it's always drive-side, so I wrapped it around a neighbouring spoke, slacked off the brake as much as I could (dared) and gingerly rode home. Of course, that was 15km or so into a head-wind with a rubbing back wheel doing the samba (the back wheel, not me).

You could say with the back end behaving quite unpredictably for 30 minutes, this was ideal 'cross preparation. Perhaps it was, but it was not what I had in mind!

This stuff happenswhen you ride bikes. It's happened to me before and it will doubtless happen again. So I can take it with equanimity; viz I'm not pissed off by this per se. It's a pretty cheap fix (as long as I remember to only buy a spoke when I'm in the shop). However, that doesn't mean I have to like it, or that it doesn't ruin a perfectly good ride when it happens.

Grrr.

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Eat, Pray, Love

Still working on a report from yesterdays cyclocross. Man, it was brutal. Daniel got a bapitism of fire (or mud really, to be more precise) and it left me tasting blood in the back of my throat for the rest of the day. Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose then.

As you know, 'cross leaves one with a ferocious appitite. So, while I'm/you're waiting for that write-up, try these on for size.

Hungry yet?

To paraphrase one of the posts on these videos; that voice, that music, I think I just watched pork porn!

So no, not Eat, Pray, Love the Julia Roberts chick-flick but rather loving to eat and then praying in a different way.

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Naughtius Maximus.

A conversation about carbon off-sets (I am going to off-set the ton of travelling I've done this year for triathlon; stay tuned for details) evolved, or devolved (depending on your point of view) into Pythonesque name-calling a la Life of Brain. As you know, I am usually tickled pink by Brian's Latin grammar lesson ("People called Romanes they go the house") but given we were doing name-calling and not verb declensions it had to be this scene instead.

Enjoy, but do twy to keep a stwaight face!

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Marathon Doom; Incomplete

We saw that tree.

Is it me, or does Mount Desert Island look like a granulocyte's polymorphic nucleus?

Of course, the scales are different, but who knew there was a fractal relationship? Funny the stuff that pops into your head when your mildy hypoglycaemic, hyponatremic, hypokalemic, acidotic and you only have yourself to talk to.

To carry on from where the last post finished, I went back to the motel room after watching the early start. It wasn't a long journey and we were close! I was still feeling decidedly m'eh with just under an hour to the gun, and when I say gun, I actually mean small cannon.

The view from the motel balcony; we were that close.

Le belle decided that she wanted to go and drop her stuff off at the bag-check now. It was clear from the finger-tapping, eye-rolling body language that if the bags weren't dropped off this instant, her entire race would be in ruins. Hey, what can I say? I didn't start the Riverport Du in the bathroom! Maybe this was why. Whatever the reason, I hurriedly finished off my (ahem) "preparations" and headed out. It was a good idea to head out at that instant however, as we bumped into most of the Nova Scotians; Shawn Deleu, David Nevitt, Karen Marlin, Leah Jabour almost immediately.

Dave Nevitt, Shawn Deleu, la belle, you-know-who, Leah Jabour, Karen Marlin and a big mountain!

Funny thing about that photo. As we lined up under the banner for the photo, the lady taking it asked "do you want the mountain in as well?". Mountain? What mountain? Feck it, there's a bloody mountain!

After a quick photo stop and bag-drop, and we were soon all back in the motel room to finish our preparations and that all-important final pit-stop. I felt a little like the NS chef de mission! Marathon veteran David Nevitt was a calming influence to us all I think, there was less evidence of nail-biting, pant-wetting nerves and more getting ready for the job.

We finally headed off down to the start with about ten minutes to go and we immediately bumped into Charles Mandel. It was good to see him again. Charles seemed to also be feeling m'eh about the whole thing, and I couldn't blame him. It was cold, it felt early and all we could see looking down the street, through the start-gantry and along the route was that mountain! That thing Oscar Wilde said about a hanging? That mountain had the same effect!

Pretty soon the energy levels started to ramp-up as the RD initiated the start-line experience. With two minutes to go, the play-list had switched to AC/DC. It sounded like Hells Bells or something similar, a gradually building crescendo of Angus Young's best that culminated with a for-real cannon-blast.

We were off.

Nova Scotia fast boys David Holder (11th in 2:52:58) and Shawn Deleu (13th in 2:53:54) soon found the second pack on the road behind a sizeable and ominous-looking lead pack. In fact, the men's course record would fall this day and six guys would go under 2:40.

I found myself with Charles, Dave, Leah and last years winner (and Maine Road Hag from CTRR) Amanda Labelle. There was a a little trash-talking; Leah said Charles sounded like he was running like a girl back there, so I told Leah she looked like a man up there.

The first hill, the first hill of many, soon came and put a stop to the trash-talking. We were only a mile into the race but it was already time to throw down. Well a little. There were still many hills and many miles to come.

Charles, David and I crested the hill together. David said we had just done the worse hill on the course. Normally, I would defer to his status as an experienced marathon runner, and one with two MDIs under his belt, but with only one hill and two miles down, this seemed like a particularly rash and irresponsible statement.

Around now we started to get mightily pissed off by George from FLA. Charles and I were doing a conservative 7 minute mile pace, and so was George. On average. You see he was doing a strange combination of run-walking; like the Running Room on Amphetamines. We passed him in the first mile walking, then he caught us on the first hill running like gangbusters, stopped looking blown, walked for a bit and repeated. Not that I mind being passed, it happens to me more often than you'd think, but this was playing merry hell with any sense of rhythm. I told Charles we'd loose him by 8 miles if he carried on like this. Which turned out to be about right. We saw less and less of him for the first hour, and after that we didn't see him at all.

The course elevation map didn't really do justice to the route as I felt it unfold under my feet. On paper it was bowl-shaped; climbs in the first eight and last five miles with relative flat in-between. In truth, this wasn't the course I remember running. The hills were fairly evenly interspersed throughout the course. Dave was right, until the final climb between 22 and 24 miles, that first climb was the worse one, in terms of length at least. The rest of the climbs weren't really that bad at all. They were enough to get stuck in to, and if like me you do well at hills, they were places to pick people off or make up a little time. There was nearly always a a downhill to recover on or, if you're like me, to loose a little ground but there was always another hill to make it back on!

The middle section was a little flatter, but all this this meant was the hills didn't come quite so quickly or steeply. I was able to push the pace a little around the half. I was feeling disgustingly good after the conservative start, and I had to remind myself constantly to keep a eye on the meter. You try not to think negative thoughts, but you spin-doctor it in your head so that you know it could still blow at any time but you're not dwelling on it! I found myself thinking thoughts I'd never had in a marathon, thoughts like "only 10 miles to go, why don't you try and open up a little" or "oh, 20 miles and feeling fine, have a bash at catching Amanda now?". Strangely positive considering I'm usually considering crawling under the nearest bush and having a nap at around this time.

Imaginary Garmin; time for plan-B

A word about the"meter". I use the term in a purely figurative sense as I was running this "old school" on a regular Timex, the mile-markers and mental arithmetic. This wasn't as bad as I had feared. Perhaps a Garmin can hold you back? I let myself run on feel, not numbers. Have you noticed that the worse you feel the more you look at the Garmin? I remember feeling like crap in Boston '10 and the Garmin just reinforced these feelings. I'd look at it repeatedly and yet it would always say "28". "What?! Only 28? Still! Still 28! That's 14 to go! Arghhh" Bonk!. Here, there was only a mile-marker every seven minutes, you see it, look at the watch, do the math, memorise a number and carry on.

The first twenty miles of MDI are the prettiest. The last six are a bit of drag along the only road to Southwest Harbour and consequently a little less scenic, except for the town of Somesville. Other than this, the course follows the coast (or nuclear membrane) fairly faithfully and you would be constantly rewarded when coning down off a hill, or topping out on a climb by seeing an incredible ocean view.

To describe the course, it distilled the best parts of the Rum Runners Relay, Cabot Trail Relay, Victoria Park in Truro, the Purcells Cove Loop just outside Halifax and the old Valley marathon route in Kentville. Yup, it was that good. I don't think I'd go as far as saying the scenery made me forget the pain (as the race-blurb would have me beleive), but I was never too far gone to appreciate it.

The sting in the tail final miles weren't as bad as feared. Instead of a steady four mile climb, it was punctuated with little descents, not enough to register on the elevation profile but enough to register in the legs. The was one long uphill drag between 22 and 23 miles with no respite, but whilst everything else was trending uphill, there were rests. I didn't get cramp in this marathon, one of the only ones I haven't. Perhaps it was both the early conservative pace and also, counterintuiviately, the hill at the end. They gave me something to work for instead of feeling sorry for myself!

In absolute terms, the race was a bit of a disaster; far from a PB. However, I can take many positives from this.

It was a solid yet enjoyable effort. After several horrible marathons, some of which felt like chores, I rediscovered a little of what it's like to enjoy running marathons again. I even-splitted this one with a 43 minute 10K, 1:33 half and 3:07 full. No cramps and an even pace, even with all that climbing. This was one of the only marathons where I've felt in full control of myself from gun to tape; I didn't even need medical at the end! I think I can build on this experience, build in some more pace over distance, but try to keep this feeling in mind; if it doesn't feel like this then I'm doing it wrong!

For the competitive jerk inside of me, there was still some measure satisfaction to be had. I won nearly all of my internal battles within the race. As always, I did pretty well in the ladies race! I was only a couple of minutes behind Leah Jabour, the ladies winner (and only winner, male or female in the history of the event, from outside the US). Amanda Labelle, second lady, was in sight for ten miles. She hove in sight at around 15 miles (where I later found out she was having problems) and I was steadily making progress on her until about 21 when she found another gear. Knowing what was coming probably helped her, knowing exactly how much she had to give.

My final battle was with Daniel, one of a large contingent from Levis, QC. I'd already passed him at about 8 miles but he and a team-mate worked together and worked me over, pulling away from me by the half. His mate was dropped earlier bur he was making good progress and I only caught him again as we topped the last hill. I remember thinking how funny it was that the Powerbar in the back pocket of his singlet looked like a puncture-repair kit! Oh well, I thought it was funny, Perhaps you had to be there. Or maybe have run for two hours first.

There was a 2000 m downhill after we topped out, and it was painful. Daniel and I both upped our pace. I'm not sure if I was trying to beat him, he was trying not to lose a place within sight of the line or if it was just the effect of the downhill! It burned the quads almost immediately. We we both grimacing in pain; "mes jambes" I said, "c'est une descente de tabernak". It may not get you your Treasury Board 'E' but it was well understood!

The clock was reading 3:07:30-something as I hit the chute. I remember thinking that a 3:07 would be a very nice result and unequivocally faster than Bluenose's 3:08 and arithmetically symmetrical to the Boston disaster of 3:14. However, I also remember thinking, no, don't sprint for the line, preserve your dignity Sir. Sure, do the fist-pump thing (always a marginal gesture in a slightly overweight 40-44 finishing >40 minutes behind the winner), maybe shed a tear or two, but don't sprint. Sprint for what? This ain't no PB you're sprinting for, it is quite literally a median marathon time for you. Sure, it may be a BQ, but one for a guy ten, twenty years younger than you, you're not fighting for 3:20:59 to make it by a second, and you don't want to go to Boston anyway! Enjoy it, float across the line instead of fighting for two seconds and a coveted top-30 spot that's yours anyway. So I did. I enjoyed it, enjoyed the feeling of the crowd, of the cheers, of the announcer, the sun on my face, a feeling of accomplishment. And it did feel like an accomplishment, not a relief, but a sense of something greater.

Speaking of announcers, the MC was going a little nuts; I was the 4th Nova Scotian in 26 finishers, more than 10% at the time, and the announcer was wondering what it was the runners were doing up there. Which is funny because at Cabot trail we say the same thing about the Maine runners!.

So that was MDI, marathon number 13 in the bag, and the third this year. I really enjoyed the race, the event and the area. It doesn't quite deserve the reputation for toughness it has, but in the same way 26.2 miles is not a distance to be taken on with alacrity, neither is this course. It deserves respect, but it will give back in equal measure.

Put it this way; I"m already signed up for next year!

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