#5--Wyoming Marathon

May 27, 2001.  5:20:19

After I qualified for Boston, I took some time off.  Probably too much time off, in retrospect.  I was into my third year of med school and I really had a hard time finding time to train.  After basically taking the fall and winter off, I was ready to run again.

I've always been goal oriented, and I needed something to get me back on the road.  By now, I had started to think about running a marathon in all 50 states.  I did a family medicine rotation in Chadron, Nebraska in the spring of 2001.  The Wyoming Marathon just outside of Laramie was within driving distance, so I signed up for it.  My training was still somewhat sporadic.  I was limited by time and was having some leg and calf pain.  I later diagnosed myself with shin splints, or posteromedial tibial stress syndrome.  I tend to over-pronate some, and I was running in fairly old and worn out shoes.  Big mistake.  My biggest mistake, however, was just not having enough respect for the course I was about to run.  My previous races had been pretty easy, and I was a Boston Qualifier.  It should be easy, right?

The Wyoming Marathon is basically a trail marathon.  It was in Medicine Bow National Forest.  Very beautiful.  It is an out and back that starts at 8500 ft elevation, downhill to 7000 ft at the turn around, and then back up to 8500 ft at the finish.  It was an incredibly hard course, and remains the most difficult marathon I've ever done, even to this day.  At several points I wanted to quit, but that would have been tough.  You are basically stranded in the middle of nowhere.  The best thing to do is just keep moving towards the finish.

Well, I did finish, but in a record slow time of 5:20:19.  Since that race I've learned a lot.  Don't run a marathon you haven't trained properly for.  Don't run in old and worn out shoes.  Trail marathons in the mountain altitude are tough if you don't live and train there.  Finally, don't get too cocky.  The marathon can be a very humbling experience.