The Marathon is finished

I'm back at Marcia & Rutger's after a pretty darned miserable day. It was 5°C/41°F at the start of the race, with a 23mph (37 km/h) wind, and rain with a teeny bit of sleet to boot. Just horrible.

I finished in 4:11. I was hoping to be just under 4 hours; in fact I finished the first half in 1:57:30, but the cold got to me and I slowed down a great deal in the second half.

My favorite part around the 30km mark was when I saw Tony! He and Ann-Catrin were following me online, and Tony ran out to find me, and he did. I ran over and gave him a big hug. That was a special moment.

Here's me just after the finish; I look a lot better than I felt. In fact, I was shivering so hard 10 minutes later, Grant had to help me into a dry jacket.

But I am proud of running pretty fast at my age and in such tough conditions. I was 4th out of 11 Americans in the 50+ age group, and 563rd out of 1842 oldsters who finished. Overall, I was in 6982nd place, out of 14687 finishers, so I made the top half at least!

Now I plan to run it again in 2020, when I'm 60. We'll see...