The Thank You Post

Training for and then running my first marathon was a lot of things, and I'll talk more about that in my next post, but first I'd like to try to try to express my gratitude to the people who helped me get there.

My wife and family made a lot of sacrifices so that I could train and come to the event. Thank you baby.

I still can't quite comprehend how generous two people can be. Jeff and smsmh drove to Vegas from San Diego, not to run the race, but just to help us runners. Thats an incredibly long way to come, both in time and money. They took us to dinner the night before the race, picked me up in the morning at my hotel and drove me to the race, and then ferried family members to different way points throughout the race. After I finished, I was driven to food and then deposited at my hotel within hobbling distance of the hot tub. Thanks guys! It was hard, but would have been incredibly harder without your support.

All the RBFers that gave me advice and support along the way made things so much easier as well. At about mile 24, I hit the wall big time. Suddenly, Drew was there, encouraging me to dig deeper and keep running. I stopped and walked briefly a couple of times after that and I'm not sure I could have ran in the last mile if he hadn't have been there to keep me going.

Thanks to Riona for blogcasting the event. I felt so special!