Paul's Blog

The Long Island Marathon/Half Marathon took place Sunday, May 6, 2007. I decided on Thursday, May 3rd I would run it again (for the third time).

My goal was to run the Half Marathon in under 2 hours (for those of you who don’t run, that’s not very fast). My best time in a Half Marathon prior to that was 2:10 (in the 2006 LI Half Marathon). I would need to run nearly 1 minute per mile faster than my fastest pace in a long race.
I thought the day would be beautiful and it turned out to be cold and very windy. Despite that, I donned my iPod shuffle and ran as hard as I imagined I could for 13.1 miles. At slightly before 10:00 a.m. with a strong wind still blowing, I crossed the finish line; my time was 1: 53:36 — nearly 20 minutes faster than my best time. I knocked 1.5 minutes per mile off of my time, which is pretty darn good. It was a new PR (Personal Record).

Trish, and good friend and fellow athlete, Mike S., were there near the finish line to root me home.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it. I hadn’t run more than 3 miles in one stretch my entire life up until 2003. Since then, I’ve run numerous half marathons (official races and training runs) and two full marathons (Vermont and New York City).

If you’d have asked me at any time in my life whether I thought I’d be a marathon runner, I would have thought you were crazy.

Ain’t life crazy.

PKM