The Farmington Festival days 1/2 marathon was yesterday. I ran the half marathon knowing that, unlike other races I have done, this one had only a limited amount of finisher medals. 150 medals for 200 plus participants. I could visualize crossing the finish and seeing the person in front of me getting the last medal. I kept that in mine for the next 2 hours while running the 13 miles. Those who have run endurance events know, thinking about it and then doing it is a different thing. Lots of times training or in a race I have set high goals at the start, only to find a convenient mental or physical excuse to give up later on.

In the later stages of the race runners around you have about your same speed and I assume are just as tired as you feel, just trying to keep running to the finish line. Several hundred yards from the finish I saw 5 or 6 runners ahead of me. I thought, "I'm not going to let them get the last medal". With kind of a grunt, that I think scared the women in front of me, I started picking up my pace, passing 1 runner then another one and another. Until I was ahead of all of them. Then the best part of the race, to see Cathryn waiting at the finish line, to stop and to get a finisher medal. Victory is sweet.

I found out that Cathryn set a personal best in the 5K. Even though my finishing time wasn't my best at 2:07, it did qualify me for 3rd place in my age bracket. I don't know how many were actually in the 60-65 age bracket, I'm hoping more than 3. We will have to wait for the official results to be posted on the web.