Today was Bill's marathon. I met Melissa and Jen at mile 5 and we planned to spend the morning together chasing Bill, Kim, and Yemi around different points of the race. Although it was chilly (45 degrees) there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the breeze was light, and it was a beautiful day for their race.

We saw them at 5, 10, 14/15 (there was a nice turnaround here so we saw each of them twice), then met them at the finish. Bill was doing really well with his times all along, but at 14 I noticed a problem. His nipple tape had come off one and it was raw and bleeding. He kept trying bandaids from 1st aid, but they kept falling off. This was going to be a problem.

We went to the finish to cheer everyone on. Kim came in right with the 4 hour group, Yemi wasn't far behind at 4:13ish. Bill then came in just over 5 hours. I was a little surprised as the last text I got was at 19.7 and Bill was on track for 4:45-4:50 or so. After the race I learned from him that the nipple really was a problem and slowed him alot after mile 19. Additionally, there had been a fire earlier in the day (delaying the start 15 minutes) and it was at about mile 22--forcing a re-route. Everyone's watches said they ran 26.5-26.7 miles. Sure enough, we learned they added about .25 on to the route. This is a good thing for Kim as she really wanted to break 4 hours and the official time said she was at 4:00:34--but with the recalculation she'll be under 4 hours. Bill ended up at about 5:03 or so with the recalculation which is just about what he had in Atlanta 6 weeks ago so that's good, and about 30-45 faster than the last few marathons before that.

Unfortunately Yemi struggled after the race and needed some medical attention, therefore we got running really late in getting back to the hotel to shower and check out. We couldn't get late check out, but Kim was gracious enough to let us use her hotel so Bill could shower before getting on the road.

We hit the road and drove back to Wisconsin right away, with a stop for dinner at a mexican restaurant (of course). We got home after 8pm and it had been a long day. Unfortunately, except for the walking around the marathon course and back and forth from hotel to start/finish, I didn't get any formal exercise in today.