Thunder Road Course Preview

Time: 92:11
Distance: ~13

Last night while supporting Matt in his latest endeavor, Jay Holder told me that a big group was departing from the Dowd YMCA at 7:00 am. I was torn because I also wanted to run with Caitlin's group from McAlpine at 9:00. Why not do both?

I met up with Jay, Paul, Aaron, Billy, Spada, Jason Martin, Leonard Hilliard, B-Mac, Nathan and many more for a tour of the first half of the Thunder Road Marathon course. I had forgotten just how hilly the first part was. Last year I must have blacked out or purposely forgotten the tough parts of the race. The opening 13 miles are definitely rolling with no one section being particularly tough, it's just that very little is flat. It was a great group to run with and the conversations were great. The pace began to pick up around 9 and we held a solid clip until the very end.

Once back at the Dowd I passed out a bunch of Nuun water bottles and some tablets to share. I had a box of 50 bottles in my car that has slowly whittled down to friends and accounts. Today was the day that I gave away the last bottle. Yes! Now I just have to get rid of the other 50 bottle box in my storage unit. Yikes. Who out there likes Nuun?

I stood around for about 5 minutes and then made the decision to hurry over to McAlpine. There was another group to run with...