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2019 Trophy Trot

Well it wouldn’t be thanksgiving without turkey right! Well, this turkey (yeah me) realized as I was parking my truck near the Trophy Trot event that I forgot my bib! Fortunately, the @runologie crew helped me out and got my number switched out. I’ve never done that before! But the real treat was getting to run this beautiful course with my friend and coach @jim_burrows_runs ! We’ve been on a 50 mile relay team together once but have never actually gotten to run together and at the last minute we both decided to just run this for fun. And we had a blast! Jim is a great guy and excellent runner so I try to learn all I can when this dude is around!

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2019 TCS NYC Marathon

The NYC Marathon was incredible! This was my second world major and second marathon. I had trained since the end of July with three goals in mind…

A – Beat 4:29:59
B – Beat 5 hrs
C – PR

I was in wave three in the green corrals so our group had the lower level of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. This made my Garmin do funky things as far as pace which made it impossible for me to know how fast I was going. So from here on out I was paying more attention to my time when I would hit the mile markers. But it also meant I was going faster at the beginning then I realized. When we got to Brooklyn it was amazing. The crowds were in full force and so supportive. Every time I’d glance at my watch after running through the crowds and getting high fives, I’d see that I was about 30-45 seconds faster than I needed to be. But it was so powerful seeing all the love we got in Brooklyn and Queens.

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2019 Marine Corps Half Marathon

Lisa took this pic of me as I was coming in for a landing. I’ve been looking forward to this race for the last month. I haven’t ran in a half marathon since last October since I’ve spent most of this year it seems Marathon training, first for Boston and now for New York. And I was keen to see how much I had improved since that Ocean Isle Half which I ran in 2:16. So this was a 10 min Half Marathon PR plus I improved 32 minutes over my previous time of 2:38 when I ran the 30th anniversary 2017 Marine Corps Half.

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2019 Tri-Span 10K

Well my 5th Tri-Span Race is now in the books. It has got to be the most challenging 10K course I’ve ever run due to the heat, humidity and hills (it crosses three bridges and the 2nd one is the toughest). Their description on their race page says in part “You know it’s going to be HOT so take the challenge with the humidity, heat, and hills of Wilmington!” They aren’t kidding. It’s been HOT every year. It was around 78* at the start at 7:05am and in the mid 80s by the time I finished. (See pic of my brother Chris and I turning to the finish after ascending the hill. We had both shed our shirts on the second bridge😂).

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2019 Home Run 5k

Had a blast at this year’s Home Run 5k benefitting the Free Will Baptist Children’s Home. Several of my great friends from our local running group, Friends Run Together, were there.

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2019 Boston Marathon

Well, after training since the second week of December with a general goal similar to Rocky in the first movie of going the distance (this was not only my first Boston Marathon, but my first marathon in my relatively young running career) I finally caught my first official unicorn even if I almost had to fall on him to catch him! 😂.

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2019 Hallucination 6 hr Trail Run

I had a terrific time at the 2019 Hallucination 6hr Trail Run down in Moncks Corner, SC this past Saturday! Chad Haffa and @eagle_endurance always have great races in scenic locales. I’ve done the Swamp Fox 14 miler the last two years and volunteered at this race last year. These are fun and challenging events.

At the beginning of the race I thought I had set my Apple Music exercise/running playlist to play and when I tapped my Bluetooth headphones instead it began playing random songs and started with Karen Carpenter singing ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire!’ I thought well this is just great and laughed at myself. I went with it for the first loop😂.

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2019 Southern Tour Ultra 50 Mile Relay

Had an absolutely awesome time today at the 4th annual Southern Tour Ultra. My 50 mile relay team, Because Uber Was Busy, was one of 79 teams to compete. We finished 50 miles with an actual time of 8hrs and 17 minutes time before our handicap. I’m really proud of that as we were a team of five and many teams had 8-10 members which meant each of us had to run two 5 mile loops. It was a very scenic race on an undeveloped tract of land along the intracoastal waterway.