results

i'm a bit disappointed with my marathon results. i shaved about 30 seconds off my previous PR, so it's a new best for me. but i was so hoping to break that 3:11 to get my boston qualifying time. for this year, it won't matter anyway (since the race is closed). so there wasn't a ton of pressure here.

on the bright side, i ran a more even-paced race. i never hit any signifcant wall of tiredness, and i even had some juice left over for the last two miles.

one thing that was lacking from this training cycle and every previous one has been the speed work. each time i train for a marathon, i go out there and do some piddly runs during the week and then usually one decent long-run on the weekend. that's fine, but it's obviously not going to get me any faster at these distances.

if i don't end up making it into the ironman lottery for next summer, i'm going to really train for chicago in october 2011 to get my time below 3:10.

Bib	First	Last	City	State	ChipTime	ClockTime	Half	30K
798	Stephen	Gamboa	Carrboro	NC	03:12:17	03:13:36

there were a few things that slowed me down, most notably, that i didn't make it to the start in time and the crowd i started with had to be fought through. the taxi cab we called the previous night failed to show up, and we had to walk toward the start until we could find a cab to hail. but i'm not going to make excuses here. i think if i had been sufficiently trained, i could have ran faster.

liv was, of course, awesome at supporting me. from getting up at 5 AM to get ready for the start until the finish line where she fed me and helped me pull on some warm clothes, i had the best [one woman] support  crew i could have asked for. thanks, baby!

despite the semi-disapointing finish time, we did have a big fun time in philly this weekend. we got to spend an entire day with ben and dawn and their new baby, julia skyke.

julia skye was the highlight of the day, but we were also quite taken with their chocolate lab, hercules.

philly was a good race, but i don't think i'll do it again. after chicago, it seemed pretty small and low-enery. i'm also not a huge fan of the out-and-back loop type courses.

although we had a very limited time to be tourists, we did see a few of the sights. we mostly walked around downtown and the penn campus.

but the best thing we saw was the mutter museum, which houses a fascinating collection of medical oddities and history. my favorites were the x-ray shoe fitter, the iron lung, the preserved mega-colon, and the liver of the original siamese twins, chang and eng bunker. turns out, those conjoined twins who settled in mt. airy, nc were only joined by a shared lobe of liver. the entire liver of both men and the shared segment are on view in the museum, bathed in formaldehyde.