Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Running fever

I have no aspirations to run a marathon. Running for 26.2 miles seems like a painful endeavor, even when I watch Adrian sail through the finish line all smiles. I enjoy watching marathoners, so I was looking forward to Adrian's participation in the P.F. Chang's Rock n' Roll Marathon in Phoenix this past weekend. We walked through the expo in downtown Phoenix to pick up his race packet and checkout the vendors.

Somewhere around the registration table, Adrian turned to me and asked, "So, are you going to sign up for the half?" He's talking about the half-marathon, which would mean running for 13 miles.

Maybe it was the free shots of Cytomax or the thousands of giddy participants parading around the expo. Whatever it was, I found myself signing up for the half marathon within 15 minutes of Adrian's question.

Long story short, I did OK. Considering that I have never run more than eight miles in a single stretch, I did fantastic. My time was 2 hours and 31 minutes. Adrian ran the marathon in 3 hours 39 minutes. Clearly, he is the runner in the family.