Done!

I looked up ahead to the finish clock and saw 3:10:43. At this point I was past running on fumes. I had nothing left. So I gave more.

I rode a personal-best 1:24 for the last 385 yards into the finish, crossing the line at 3:10:54 on my watch and 3:10:56 officially. I did it! I qualified for Boston!!!

Out of pure exhaustion, I stumbled through the finish chute, nearly into the guy ahead of me getting his medal. Luckily two people on the medical staff caught me and helped me over to the medical tent. Needless to say, I didn't provide much of the walking power to get there. They took some vitals and brought me food and drink to refuel, and were really helpful. Once I had the energy to stand and walk around a little, I gave my mom a hug and headed over to the finish area to see my dad finish and celebrate with my cousin, aunt and uncle (and family friends who happened to be in NH also showed up a little later too).

Little medal, big significance

My dad came in at 4:26:38, his best time in roughly 3 years. When I told him my time he got really excited, hugged me, poured his water over my head and cramped :)

I finished 17th overall out of 305, but only 12th in my age group, since the age group was 39 and Under. 39 and Under? Haha, oh well. At that point, I didn't much care. It was, however, the first time I was counting places in my head as I was running a marathon.

I thought for a second I had accidentally erased the splits on my watch, which upset me until I realized they were really still there. We showered up at the Keene State College gym and headed out to celebrate with nice, big juicy burgers!

Mmmm

Overall, I thought the course was pretty good, though not nearly as easy as I expected. The fall colors made the first half beautiful, and most of the town wasn't too bad. Small race and small town meant very little spectators until the last turn. That made some stretches VERY tough mentally and, frankly, a little boring. We did forget to pick up our bags that we left at the start... but it was a nice, small-town marathon without many frills, good organization and friendly people. The weather was a few degrees warmer than perfect (51 at the start, 65 by finish), and less cloud cover than we had hoped, but we can't ask for too much now can we?

I ended up with several PRs: Full and Half marathon times, overall finish, time spent in the medical tent...

I also hit 9,000 miles for my running career somewhere in the first half of the race.