Nine Minutes and Twenty Seconds.

We ran over there this morning and looked for the mark on the road. That faint spray paint sign saying 25. We finally found it and I reset my stopwatch, and we turned around and ran back up MLK, took a left turn by the Texas History Museum and headed to the Capitol building.

I don’t remember the distance between the turn and the barricades at the capitol being so long. 2 minutes and 34 seconds to the barricades. We continued on, and I got goose bumps as we ran past the barricades and the planter. We continued around the capitol building at our leisurely pace, and down to Congress avenue. I’d run this stretch from the base of the capitol ground to the Frost tower before during an easy run and timed it at 4 minutes. We continued on, getting lucky on almost all the crossings as we headed from 12th street down to the magical 4th street crossing where the Frost Tower is.

We eventually reached the Frost Tower, and as Nedra, Karma and I reached the end of the block, I felt my hairs rise again on my neck. I stopped my timer: nine minutes and twenty seconds.

Back in February, I had crossed the 25mile marker and my watch read 3 hours 5 minutes and about sixteen seconds. I was so tired I couldn’t do the math in my head to tell me how much I could slow down to get to the finish line inside of 3 hrs 15min 59 seconds. But today, I know. I could have slowed down by almost a minute per mile slower, and I would have finished the marathon in 3 hours 14 mins and 36 seconds. Almost a minute and half to spare, almost a minute and a half that I could have taken to walk parts of the last stretch.

Now I’ve completed it and now I know.
Chicago will not have the same outcome as Austin.
There’s no way in hell.