Lehigh Valley Marathon - DNS

Lehigh Valley Marathon, PA Sept 12, 2010

The day before the race, I got up at 3 am for a 3 hour drive to Maryland. I was meeting a running gal that I had met at the Holiday Lake 50k++ run in February, along with a few of her running peeps, to run the Appalachian Trail section of the JFK 50 Miler on November 20th. The meetup was smooth, and we were off, had a great but rocky 13 mile run.

Afterwards, we had lunch at IHOP then I hit the road for the 2nd half of my drive to Allentown/Bethlehem, PA for the marathon the next day. Dun, dun, dun.

As I was exiting to go to the expo to pick up my race packet, my car made some funny noises and as I was pulling onto the shoulder it died, no restarting, dead. So I called AAA, got the car towed to the nearest Subaru dealer (only 4 miles) and then got a ride from the tow truck guy to the race expo, 5 min after they closed. Luckily they were still there and I got my stuff. I then ask if anyone knows of a good way to get to the hotel I was staying at (bus, taxi, what have you), and one of the volunteers offered me a ride (sweet!).

However, the next day I did not head to the marathon. You see, I didn't want to be wiped out come Monday to do some hard decision making about the car and opted to sleep in instead and not run. I was also wildly undertrained with my excuse being the overly hot summer and working too much.

So what did I do? I called in to work for Monday, rented a car, told the dealer to replace the engine, and headed back to Virginia.

Now on to Chicago this weekend to redeem myself, and to pick up state #10 so I can then apply to the 50 states club and get one of those neat shirts where you cross off each state that you finish on the back.

Gorgeous weather today, which is slowing down my packing for this weekend. There are worse things I guess....