Nailed It

I just realized not only has it been a long time since I posted but that I also never told the story of the Lake Placid Half Marathon. The story here is, there really is no story. This is definitely a 'no news is good news' situation. Before I started, I expected the story to read something like this:

Local Buffalo woman is mercy flighted to Lake Placid Hospital after tripping over her own two feet around mile 8 of the Lake Placid Marathon and Half. The 25 year old woman broke both her ankles and, inexplicably, her nose.

I expected the story to be like that because, you know, have you met me? Sometime between miles 4 and 6 (though the original story was still highly plausible) the story in my head changed:

Local Buffalo woman is mercy flighted to Lake Placid Hospital after being attacked by a bear during the Lake Placid Marathon and Half. The woman, 25, was minding her own business when a black bear came barreling out of the woods and ripped her face off. She is in intensive care.

This came to mind because we may as well have been running directly through the woods. There were points on this course where it was just mountain roads with nothing but woods on either side. Not to mention one of our supporters saw a bear on the side of the road just the day before. These were the Adirondack's here people, any number of animals could have come creeping out of those woods. So that could have happened but around mile 12 I knew what the official story was going to be:

Local Buffalo woman is mercy flighted to Lake Placid Hospital after appearing to drop dead because no one alerted her to the fact that the Lake Placid Marathon and Half course was pretty much straight up hill. The woman, 25, is not dead and was taken back to the course so she could crawl across the finish line.

Seriously. I know I probably should have said to myself, 'Hey, this is in the Adirondack Mountains it is probably going to be hilly. Get your head in the game.' But no. Everyone we talked to said, 'Oh no, it's not that bad.' I promise you, no matter where you've run, you've never run up anything like this. Oh wait, there was that guy in the elevator who had just run his 42nd marathon who told us that Big Sur is worse. Freaking. Big. Sur. I've also heard San Francisco is a bitch but, the point here is, it was hilly. Happily, the story *actually* ended like this:

Local Buffalo woman actually ran across the finish line of her first half marathon in Lake Placid this weekend. The woman, 25, was fairly certain this would never happen but it did. She also never thought she would ever want to train for an endurance event again, but she does. Woman says she will be very careful to check the elevation map of the course she chooses next.

(It's pretty clear none of this was actually reported anywhere but here right?)