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As the starting marathon of this season, I wanted to make it an easy one. I had checked the course description and elevation charts and they didn't look to bad.

The runner's comments seemed to harp on the one real hill hill, but I figured, "How bad can that be?" Doh.

Stowe is pretty sleeply in the summer, but it was a nice fall day and I wandered around this quaint New England town. I had pizza at Pie in the Sky, which was really good.

Packet pickup had no expo, and was also pretty sleepy. 110 marathoners.

We lined up on the road, had a moment of silence for 9/11 (and Katrina) and the race director started us with "Ready? GO!"

The course was a clover leaf run mainly on the bike path, that crossed itself a few times. That confused me (especially, late in the race), as we pass the infamous mile-7 aid station 4 times from different directions.

Mile 9 starts the mother of all hills. 2 Miles of straight up, followed by 2 miles of straight down. I did S turns in both directions.

By mile 14, I had nothing left, as was walking frequently. From that point on, my splits never dropped below 11, and had a pace killing 17'15 mile 21 that will haunt me till I die. You will remember that an average runner can walk a mile in 16 minutes diatribe from my walk-break document. Yikes.

3 miles out I realized that if I didn't pick it up, I wouldn't beat 5 hours, but still wasn't able to keep the 11 1/2 minute pace I needed to pull it off.