marine corps marathon
The big day came & went. It was 4h19m38s. It was faster than any fair training effort, despite overcoming challenges with the mobs & getting water. The training times were being improved by 30 minute bathroom breaks or long breaks for eating. The fairer training times were without breaks.
12,350 women finished. 17,797 men finished. No men got an OTQ on that course while the top woman did. It seems to attract the military, which made it manely men. The largest age group was 25-29. Lions are in the twilight of the marathon age groups. Lions were damn slow, but somehow above the median in both age group & overall.
The weather was as good as possible.
Had diarrhea for several hours before the race. Only got to where it could be held, but moving to the starting line wasn't easy on an empty stomach. Either goldfish or cheezeits caused diarrhea for the 1st time.
Lions left the hotel 1 hour before race time but didn't reach the starting line until slightly after the 1st wave started. The train system was packed & delayed. Managed to catch up to the 4 hour wave just as it got started. There wasn't any enforcement of corrals because it was a vast sea of animals. There wasn't any metal detector like the NY half marathon.
There also weren't any markings for where to go. You had to either have a phone or memorize the rough directions. The expo was brutal. Once again, no marked directions. Would consider paying to ship the bib.
Glucose went as planned, 1 clif blok every 2 miles for 13 miles, then 1 clif blok every mile for the last 13 miles. Had no food before the race, because of the diarrhea, but didn't have any wall issues.
Had minor sciatica in the 1st 10 miles which went away as the pace slowed. Also had minor twitches in the calves which went away after mile 10. The low point began after mile 12.
Dodged the 4 hour guy for the 1st 18 miles. Would get ahead of him & then fall back at the next water stop. Helas, saw him blow by at mile 18. He got farther & farther in the distance until he disappeared on the bridge.
Just like every previous effort, the wheels fell off after mile 23.
That was where the warning signs of impending cramping began, but it ended up being the 1st race with no cramping. It could have been
hydration again. There was no dedicated filling for bottles. You just
hoped someone had a pitcher, which not all the aid stations did. So
lions missed a few aspirational water stops either because no-one had a
pitcher or because they didn't have electrolyte.
The walking
section seemed shorter on this one. Manged to get back to sub 14 minute
pace quickly. It seemed most runners were blowing through the last 6 miles at sub 10 minutes. Lions pondered how so many did it, since they were all in the sub 4 hour group for the 1st 20.
Passed by many men who were completely immobilized by cramping on the side of the course, as a younger lion was, years ago. That level of cramping was narrowed down to glucose depletion, to be avoided at all costs with a glucose supplement.
Lions have a finite amount of power which can be delivered in a certain amount of time. That amount seems to be fixed. It doesn't matter if lions start out slow or fast, take lots of breaks. Maybe the last 3 would have been faster if lions slowed down in the 1st 10.
Shuffling past Arlington cemetery, lions pondered if only grandpa was there to see his descendant shuffling by. Being there in spirit would have to suffice. Also pondered how many of the marines we saw there would someday be sent to far away shitholes & not coming back.
Diarrhea resumed after the race. It now seemed to be from Targ beef jerkey.
As the finisher swag piled up, it became clear some sight seeing time would have to go to a trip to the UPS store. That ended up being $40. Fortunately, it all compressed into a smaller box. A larger box would have been over $70. The USPS might have been cheaper.
Time actually abounded, since the museums were closed. Slept all day after the marathon again. Then got some video heading to the UPS store. Having had many flashbacks of forgotten places, lions have resorted to leaving the camera on all the time.
While younger lion was fully awake, old lion ended up sleeping for large portions of Mon & Tue afternoon. Gone were the miles of wandering, looking for food. It was all on the phone. Mon was intended to be a long train ride to Udvar Hazy.
Lots of swag with this one.
Then the desire to try again as soon as possible in Napa returned. As a lion who does 1/2 marathons below 1:50, sub 4 hour marathons should be possible. It would be quite expensive, but lions are running out of time.
It makes lions ponder retiring early & just focusing on this. Lions aren't fast enough to make such a drastic move.
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Pondered finally implementing a converter to get watch data into the ultramap viewer, but it's just 1 more thing no-one is ever going to see. Helas, the copy of Timex Smart on the newest phone couldn't export any GPX data from the MCM because of data corruption. It briefly flashed the workout didn't exist & failed.
The copy on the old phone worked before, so the next step was to try to sync on the old phone. After logging into the app on the old phone, it failed to retrieve any data beyond the test workouts in June. Circling back to the new phone & logging into the app, it now lost the MCM recording & only reported the test workouts in June. It would no longer retrieve the recording from the watch.
What seems to have happened is the syncing process marked the recording on the watch to never be synced again. Then logging into a copy of the app without the synced data caused it to mark the online copy as deleted. Logging into the new app then deleted anything that was marked deleted. After a few attempts swapping apps, it disabled the account with a certain timeout.
The next step was to try creating a new account & syncing again. Helas, this deleted the very last recording on the watch. It seems the watch is bound to only 1 account on the app & changing users erases all of its memory with no confirmation.
The old account came back after the timeout, but could no longer access the watch. The watch would need a complete reformat to connect to the old account. So a malicious user could delete all the data on any watch just by making a new account. The watch did prompt for binding, but it never warned about the reformatting.
Besides the high res data, it wasn't all that valuable. It only provided a time before the official results, heart rate data, cadence, & would have specifically shown where lions walked. Lions never reviewed any past recording of an official race or cared much about heart rate & cadence data.
A long process that began with fabricating a custom charger ended with software which just wasn't up to any practical use. It represents the design & quality of IOT software of the mid 2010's, with the common syncing bugs lions had to fix. It requires an iterative development process which wasn't fully understood by the mid 2010's.
The next race will need a new strategy. Most runners have their phones + watch. The timex could work if lions remembered to only have 1 app installed & the GPX export was tested. Lions could burn another pile of cash on a new watch.
https://diyusthad.com/2021/04/top-5-open-source-smartwatch.html
There are some open source watches for yet another pile. The poor lion pays twice.
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Then the lion kingdom set to the task of making lemonade out of lemons, with all the museums closed. Roughly 16 miles in total with the truck & some more with just the DSLR.
Got some unplanned but nifty blue angles selfies. There wasn't any way to plan any shots so they were hit or miss. It was an off the cuff, unplanned flight, according to the internet.
Helas, they wouldn't allow the truck anywhere within .5 miles of the capital building or within .25 miles of the white house. Ask lions how they know. The buffer zones were a shock. They extended way beyond the fences & weren't clearly defined.
It might be possible with a formal filming permit, but it would be expensive, time consuming, & probably require a big gootube star.
They did let the truck up to the white house fence, but with a lot of heckling. It wasn't the lion kingdom's proudest moment & if Trump was really there, it would have probably been a fail.
Rocket powered bike isn't going to get that close anymore.
Lions once considered living there & running around the monuments every day to be an intriguing life. The reality of hardly being able to go anywhere with the truck made it a lot less appealing. Getting food would entail some serious detours.
Lions now pondered ever being able to get a run video past a fully stacked starship. That's unlikely.
They probably have a similar buffer zone around the pentagon. Lions only noted some no photography signs around the pentagon station, but animals were taking low quality photos with their phones. Lions didn't dare break out the 200mm.
Lions wanted to capture the 1940's style of the facade. It conveys the bleak, utilitarian time during which it was built.
Unlikely anyone is stupid enough to put a military secret in a window.
Georgetown is a fascinating, historic piece.
Robot less trip there yielded some shots.
Moments before disaster. Beauty shot lions always wanted, anyway.
Final shots in capital hill with the phone.
Lens had a definite smudge, as usual.
Barley Mac smash burger. Lions so rarely eat out, that was quite good.
The hotel was the most luxurious a lion ever stayed in. It definitely saved time, being right next to grocery stores & the train station. Helas, there ended up being plenty of time. That neighborhood seemed manely inhabited by military men. The apartment tower next door was $2500-$6000 & had a lot of male roommates.
Lions don't see any situation arising where it would be necessary to return to the days of Travelodges & long drives to the starting line. Lions travel rarely enough, don't have to haul around a family, & the money situation has been stable enough to afford decent hotels. A cheap motel would only be necessary for a very long stay, a week long trip to FL. Lions still get everything done in 4 days.
The price difference isn't what it was 35 years ago. The payoff between price & convenience isn't what it was. The accommodations have risen to being just as important as the destination.
National cathedral & Healy hall were barely visible from that room. Patio down there had a better view of the river than what lions got.
Typical Georgetown university scene.
Patio elevation compared to where lions went.
Dulles crawler transporters got the lion kingdom's attention. Horribly expensive to manetain & inefficient, but a sign of the 60's belief in proving the capitalist system caused innovation in all things.
Lions didn't use the metro in 2016, but they adopted contactless payment just 5 months ago, making it a lot simpler. It's still super complex, as regards converting signage to directions. While it looked like James Earl Jones's 80's, it was built in the late 70's.
House & Broad finally didn't have the riot fence. The "ballroom" construction was completely hidden behind a vast perimeter & opaque walls. Suspect it has other features, as regards a secret bunker, command center, escape passages, storage for 30 years of supplies, alien specimens.
Lots of pilings for the "ballroom".
The lion kingdom's beloved Albert Gallatin statue was now far inside the restricted zone, but it made hauling the 200mm worth it. That defiant pose always conveyed "you ain't getting our loot to fund DEI programs" Well, they eventually did. In his time, it must have been defiance aimed at England instead of the people.
Heroine statue only got some phone photos this time. Hideously poor dynamic range. Don't know what the mane ties were for.
The highrises of Arlington weren't all that inspiring. These rear cam videos all looked the same.
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