Athens Marathon

I got up very early Saturday morning and ran laps at the track in Huntsville before flying to Columbus, Ohio and driving to Athens for the 44th Athens Marathon on Sunday. Athens is home to Ohio University and extremely hilly. The entry fee was only $40 and that came with a long sleeve tech shirt. Another nice thing about the race was a 9 a.m. start. When I got up Sunday morning, I had to scrape the ice off my windshield. I parked at the Ohio University track where the race was to finish and walked nearly a mile up hill to the start line in downtown Athens. The first mile of the course was all downhill until we reached an 8-foot wide asphalt paved bike trail. From then on, the course was flat. We ran out on that trail to the turnaround point at 13.1 miles. The trail followed a canal most of the way. When we got back to the city, we took another bike trail to the track and we finished with 1 and a half loops around the track. While the race started with a temperature in the 30's, it warmed up to the 50's during the race. Perfect running weather. I finished in 5:36:51, which was my best time this season. There were five in my 65-69 age group and I took 2nd. There were 201 finishers in the marathon and five were from Texas. Of the five in my age group, 3 were from Texas. I spent Sunday night in Athens and then drove back to Columbus this morning. My wife was born there and I spent most of today locating and visiting her ancestor's graves in two cemeteries and taking photographs. Because of the bad weather today, my flight back to Houston was late and I did not get back to Huntsville until about 11 p.m. tonight. So, I went to the track and ran laps tonight before midnight.