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I began training for my second, the Marine Corps Marathon, and was bored with the solitude of training alone. I joined the MCRR's first time marathon program, run by Paul Friedman.

The Galloway program has you run long runs of 24, 26, 28, then the Marathon. I figured I could get to 24, then run 3 marathons back-to-back; that is, one every 3 weeks. The plan was to run MCM, followed by the MITP, then Disney. So I began training for that.

While running with the FTM group, I met a ton of great people, including Tim Pike and Tierney Hunt, both planning on running the MCM then MITP. Tim ran in a 9MM group that I could only keep up with for the first 15 miles or so, and we passed back and forth on virtually every training run.

Also during those long runs, I met John Noble (who would replace Paul Friedman in 2002 as the head of the FTM program). I was talking about my back to back to back plan, and he remarked that he thought it was dumb, but that he did that kind of thing when he was trying to run his 50 by50. 50 by 50! What a great goal! That's where the idea for my 50 by 50 came from.

A brilliant blue met us race day. Coming one month after September 11th, security was very tight and omnipresent.

Starting at the entrance to the Marine Memorial, we lined up in our corrals. I hung out with the 10 MM FTM group (planning a 4:15ish time). The Cannon went off -- and we stood there... waiting for the marines to walk us down to the start. It is a chip race, so that was ok.

In this race, the Phantom pain had moved from my knee to the top of my left foot. The pain began from the first step.

My brother Gary, his wife Traci and my father had planned to meet me around the course. I saw them at 2 and 5, then again on the mall a couple of times. That was great.

The run took us by the Pentagon. The damage was visible from the route and some runners stopped to look and take pictures.