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| USA Spartathlon Team! Who will be next? |
Summary
I definitely was feeling a bit apprehensive as the final ten
seconds were counted off by the throng of 349 fellow Spartathletes; my heart
was definitely beating hard; could feel my pulse throbbing in my neck;
butterflies in my stomach. After all it had only been 66 days since I finished the
Badwater 135 in strong fashion. It was anybody’s guess how I’d be able to
handle another 200km++ race so soon after.
However, I had no reason to worry. I had a pretty good race
overall. Had some stomach issues mid way through the race that gave some scares about my ability to keep under the strict cutoff times but I rallied and finished well. Honestly had no expectations going into this race other than to survive
to the finish. My final finish time was 31:46:50 (12:26 pace) and 49th
place overall and a healthy 4h 13m 10s under the 36 hour cutoff. By virtue of
Katalin Nagy, a dual US-Hungarian citizen who finished in 28:55:03 and 16th
overall, choosing to represent Hungary I was technically the first finisher
from the United States, and first from the Western hemisphere (North &
South America). Not too shabby!
Read on for more detail about my race. Warning: it is quite
lengthy in my traditional stream of consciousness narrative kind of way!
