#34 Marathon and the Crabs

I had seen the crazy crab shaped medal on the registration page and I had to have it! The whole shell opened up too to reveal the skyline of the city of Baltimore. It sounds like a fun race…..and I needed to knock out the state of MARYLAND. We lived so close but I hadn’t ran a marathon here yet. So I set out to tackle this one. I had felt confident at the Wineglass but didn’t do my best performance. I was still struggling to achieve a strong finish again this year. My weight was up and I am convinced that it was a result of switching my insulin. I weighed more than 20 pounds from this time last year. That has got to hurt.

We set out to bring my grandson Slater with us. He had mentioned that we wanted to see me run and I think he was missing out on a little bit of grandparent time. It was going to be a five hour drive but we could take out time and get there without wearing ourselves out. We had reserved a hotel right downtown so it’d be quick to the start line. However funny thing happened when we got there……the hotel didn’t have our registration. My wife had signed up through the race website so we could get a discount. I even had the registration email. But the hotel couldn’t find it. After closely looking at the email they had booked us for the race……in 2019!!!!!! Well they got us a room, cost us another $50 and to date we still haven’t received our refund. Not sure if I want to run it again just to get my hotel money back. Lol. We walked around the race expo and showed Slater all the fun activities. Afterwards we went down to the waterside and visited some of the different shops before deciding to eat dinner…..Hard Rock Café.

Back to the hotel for a early night. We got up early like usual and I prepared for my race. Getting everything packed and all my breakfast and running snacks. The temperature was just right for running. I was glad of that. However I quickly found out that there were HILLS IN BALTIMORE. More than I had imagined. The race was tougher than I hoped. I struggled but was determined to finish. The fun part was getting to a few spots where both my wife and grandson were waiting on me to cheer me on. That was rewarding in itself.

In short, I finished. Got my medal. Slater thought it was cool too. And we headed back to Virginia. Slater got a lot of attention and I finished another marathon in another state. My 15th different state. I’m eyeing the next one. As always, I share my story as a diabetic and why I run. That is important to me. Continue to spread the word.