Let's be honest. No one wants to read the tedious play-by-play of my marathon. If you do, you're clearly mental or in love with me, neither of which ever exist exclusive of each other. I pity the fool. Annnnnyway, racing for me has rarely been about time, rather more so a measure of a life well lived. On that note, please join me, fine friends, on an obscenely lengthy, abundantly hyphenated word laden journey through the good, bad, and ugly adventures of my Marine Corps Marathon. It promises to offend. Let's start with the bad and the ugly, ending our sojourn with a gloriously good finish.

The Bad

The lack of pace markers. One would think that with 30,000 runners split into two waves, pace cards at the start would be standard operating procedure. Why it was overlooked is a mystery. I can only guess that the race organizers figured it would be too difficult for runners to organize themselves. The result? An instant clumping field rife with tea parties, large phalanxes of abruptly stopping Gallowalkers, and left lane lingerers, which warranted the Texas Two Step and sometimes backward running to pass. Something akin to sidestepping a pasture full of cow pies at full speed. I hit 3 miles at 35 minutes and spent the next 10 trying to regain some ground.

My elevation map hubris. I never read elevation maps. In fact, I believe they are a conspiracy aimed to intimidate. Besides, I run hills. I'm not scared. The talk around town decried the first 2 miles as heinous and hilly, even suggesting that they should be walked, which might explain the aforementioned logjam. After 2 miles, I guffawed. Those were hills? I spent the next 23 miles rolling my eyes as I zipped up gentle inclines. Tuckered out and determined to put the whole event to bed, at mile 25 I was on the tear, 1.2 to go. Arriving at mile 26, I received my well-deserved comeuppance in the form of .2 mile gargantuan hill to the finish. As a result, I have no memory of the last 100 yards of the race.

The Ugly

An inaccurate morale-sucking spectator. A lengthy stretch after the 10-mile mark, Spectator (sort of rhymes with Skelator) enthusiastically wailed, "Wooo hooo! 13 is just around the corner!" A peek at my watch indicated that I was on pace for a 4-hour finish, a possibility not all unreasonable because it happened in Philly two years ago. Rock! However, as I turned the corner I nearly turned into a one-woman blitzkrieg when I saw a sign for mile 12. For this colossal infraction, Spectator earns the first honorary Megan Boyle Marathon Punch in the Face Award.

Non-running post-race gluttons. Contrary to popular belief, the food at a marathon finish is not a free-for-all buffet for families with their Hummer-sized strollers to plunder. Exhausted and disoriented, I thought I'd mistakenly missed the real finish and stumbled into the Million Mother March. I managed to escape the quagmire with just a small bottle of water. Luckily, I had packed some eats in my baggage which was located, HA HA, up an awesomely steep embankment in a UPS truck.