The stick

Now I know what you are all thinking.

What about your IT bands? How did you make it through with all the pain?

How? Easy. Because I had no pain!

But Doug, how did you get rid of the pain?

I was worried. The day before the marathon I did a warm up run and I was in a lot of pain after just a 3 mile jog. Thank God for the marathon Expo. Not only did I get lots of great running gear, I also discovered "The Stick".
This thing saved me. I was able to break down all my tight muscles in my legs and lower back. It did what the foam roller was supposed to do without the pain. The foam roller just hurt. When using the stick I can just feel it working. It was amazing. Since bringing it back from the marathon, I have brought the stick to work. Everybody loves the stick. My supervisors, my directors, my production managers, my coworkers, my friends.

But what caused the pain? Did it come back?

No. The pain has yet to return. Ya see, I found that my shoes are what caused my IT band problems. My shoes. They were TOO stable. They made my feet pronate more, tightening my IT bands. As long as I had those shoes no amount of acupuncture or massage was going to fix the problem permanently. So I bought new shoes. Brooks.
When I was home at X-mas I went to this great running store, whose name eludes me. They did a stride analysis with my original suaconys (too stable) and 5 other pairs and styles till I found the one pair where I felt no pain; a great pair of Brooks that were $40 cheaper than my Sauconys.
Yay me.

Yes. I finished. Yay me!

so I finished. It was a long time ago. So here's the story. Best as I remember it.

let me start with the quick synopsis....
My time was 5h21min20 secs
Go here to see my full details. and enter my name.
Go here to see some goofy photos of me running. And then click on "see my photos".

It was a really hot day. 85 degrees and lots o' sun. On the day before and the day after there was intermittent rain. But on the day of the race it was hot with no clouds. I think it was the hottest Honolulu marathon they have had. Even the times of the winners were really slow, comparatively speaking. I mean, hey. They kicked my ass.

My friend Will came out to run the thing with me. This was, hands down, the best part of the trip. This was his 6th marathon of the year. To sum it up, he was slumming it, walking, er running, the marathon with me. Ok, we did a bit of walking.

I had a Timex "Speed and distance" gps for the run. I was surprised to see that at the end of the race I had run 27.4 miles. How is that possible? It's only a 26.2 mile course. Then I realized. I ran an extra 1.2 miles just weaving through all the people that I passed throughout the race.

I finished the run with a 100 yard final sprint. Yay me.

The finish was really pretty emotional. I was surprised about how emotional it was. I really felt like I accomplished something huge. in the end I raised over $5000 for AIDS and HIV research thanks to all of you.

But Honolulu was not just the marathon.
I also had some fun too. I did some surfing which was awesome. I did some snorkeling, which was gorgeous. Went to the USS Arizona memorial. Went up to the North Shore to watch the bonsia surf competittion but the waves were too small. they were only 6-8 feet tall on the front face. but I saw some pretty amazing surfing. I need to get out there and start doing some surfin up in SF.

It was really a great experience and I will do more. I am talking to Will and my friend Kurt to run the Florence, Italy marathon next november. In the meantime I am getting ready for a sprint triathlon later this summer.