Darkside Memorial Day 26.2 Mile Fun Run

The running cult I belong to puts on three free marathons every year. I used this one as a training run for my 24 hour run coming up on Saturday. It was 70 degrees with a dew point of 70 at the start, so I knew it was going to be a hot one. There were about a dozen Darksiders that showed up and stunt-double Race Director Victor sent us on our way at 7 AM. The race consists of five 5+ mile loops on the Peachtree City golf cart paths. My first two loops were fine, but I was taking it nice and slow. On the third loop my right knee decided to start squawking and that combined with the rising temperature made me walk quite a bit of the third loop.

My knee was yelling at me by the time I finished the third loop, so I decided to call it quits. I dropped my bottles off in my car and got out my lawn chair to watch the other runners come through the aid station. By the time I finished my Diet Dr Pepper (about 15-20 minutes) I decided that I would go back out and walk a loop. After all, I would be walking quite a bit at the FANS 24 hour run. I was able to maintain about 16 minute miles while walking and about halfway through the fourth loop my knee felt just fine. Oh great, now I'll have to do the fifth loop and complete the marathon. When I got back to the aid station, I put all my stuff in my car so that Victor would be able to pack things up and I headed back out. I walked the entire fifth loop also and ended up walking it about two minutes faster than the previous loop. I checked the weather when I finished and the temperature was 86 degrees, the dew point was 72, and the heat index was 92. Victor had everything packed away when I finished so I headed to my car, drove home and emailed him my finish time.

I love Darkside marathons, they are so low key, they are negative key and its always nice to see the other cult members.

Everyone heading out on the first loop

Stunt-double Race Director Victor busily manning the aid station