Athens Big Fork Marathon

So the other night while talking with my wife, about all these crazy ideas I have, I thought why not start a blog and share some of my crazy ideas and thoughts I have about running and maybe even life in general.  Most people think I'm a little crazy and this blog may give some people insight into what drives me to do some of the things I do.  I have a lot of ideas for blog posts on this subject running around in my head and plan to post at least one a week so check back often.  If you enjoyed the post leave me a comment and any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. 

In early December after a run with some friends, they suggested I come and run the Athen's Big Fork Trail Marathon in Arkansas, on 1-7-2012.  It is one tough marathon with 4000ft of gain out and back.  So I add this race to my schedule and make it my first race of 2012.  I looked at the results from previous years, and thought I can do that.  So I set out to run this race and see what I could do.  Most people would taper for a race like this, but not runnerfreak.  Especially if they intended to race, and do well.  But in the week leading up to the race Runnerfreak goes out and runs 105 miles.  With runs of 30, 21 and a 50K (31 miles on New Years Day) the weekend before.  And I still felt like I could go out and race.  Runnerfreak then runs another 28 miles the week of the race.  On the way to the race, I tell the wife I want to at least run a sub 5 hour on this course (never seeing it) and you take out the guy, Tom Brennan who has won like 8 times or something and has the course record of 4:22 (yes 4:22 for a marathon that has been run since 1999 shows how tough it is) there have been very few sub 5hr finishes.  So anyway, I go out and run with the leaders the first 7 miles and let the leader go and nip on his tail all the way to the turn around at 13.1.  He was ahead of me by a minute or two at the turn. In the second half I catch him at about mile 18 or so and he tells me it's not his day and let's me go without a fight.  I run the rest of the race looking over my shoulder as there was another 4-5 runners who came into the turn within a couple minutes of me.  I wind up winning the race in 4:49 and still felt like I could of run faster.  Note: Tom Brennan did not show up this year.  Most people would be tickled pink with that, but not Runnerfreak, he analyzes every mile of the race and determines where he could of run better and faster.  That's why they call me Runnerfreak!