Austin Marathon - Race recap

For those of you that have been following my blog up to this point, you already know that the Austin Marathon on February 18 was my 16th marathon (4th Austin Marathon), and I ran it with a very bad left shin splint that I have been trying to get over since the first of the year. I was taking it as easy as I could for the first 15 miles or so at about an 8:30 pace (a full 30-50 seconds slower per mile than my normal marathon racing pace), but the pain started to be too much to bear, so starting at mile 16 I decided to walk for 3 minutes, then run to the next mile marker for as long as I could keep that up. At mile 21, the pain was too much, so I simply walked the final 5 miles to the best of my ability. I knew that my family was waiting for me about 200 yards from the finish line, so I mustered up enough to "run" past them down to the finish line. I still finished in a respectable 4:32:02 and am proud that I accomplished my main goal of simply finishing without any expectations as to a particular time. I got to visit with a lot of really neat people over those last 5 miles, some of them members and readers of Faithful Soles who saw my tshirt from the back with the Faithful Soles logo and simply stopped to walk and talk with me, all at the expense of their own time. My 14 year old son Robert ran his second half-marathon in 2:25:51, beating his previous best at Houston last month by 3:59, which is amazing considering that Austin was one of the hilliest courses I have ever run.