Marathon number 22 was the Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington, Va and Washington DC on 26 October, 2008.

Clock time of 3:21:16 and chip time of 3:21:10. Based on the clock time, I finished 710 overall, 640/11120 men, 52/1356 in my age group.

I finished 29th among 353 people named David, 2nd among 48 people from Durham and first among 6 Brady's. If I were still from Montana I would have been first among 15, but in the event I finished 35th among 978 North Carolinians.

The splits are at dbontherun.

I like the trend of recent finishing times, excluding the unfortunate debacle in Vermont, here is a plot of finishing times since the beginning of this project:

The quirky nature of the ordinate axis is due to Excel. I should have used Mathematica.

I trained for 22 with my good friends Curtis, Eric and Shahar. After driving up on Saturday, I stayed in a palatial room at the Washington Suites Alexandria with Curtis and his son. We drove to the DC Armory as a group in drenching rain (Eric dropped us at the door and parked) to get our packets. We had a great group dinner on King Street near the river in Alexandria. The hotel dropped us at the Metro the morning of the race, we got off at the Pentagon and did our business until the race started at 8 am. We started near the front and had no trouble getting in the corrals.

Eric ran with Curtis for the first two miles, the first at 7:40 pace and the second a bit faster. Curtis and I ran together from mile 2 to mile 12. The goal was to get Curtis on a 3:15 pace. We were going faster than I thought wise and faster than I thought I could do. 22:43 for 5K, 45:16 for 10, 135:48 for the half. But we felt good and it is better to pass than to be passed. Sarah joined us at 12 miles to bring Curt in (he finished in 3:17:57, third among Taylors). I faded back. Miles 21 and 22, on concrete bridges and roads crossing the river and heading into Crystal City, were particularly hard. The uphill finish at the Marine Corps War Memorial is brutal.

Getting out of Rosslyn at the finish is a major pain, there seemed to be a 2 hour line to get the Metro. We walked down to Key Bridge and got a cab to the hotel, where I washed up and drove home.

The weather was beautiful and the run is spectacular. As we ran toward the river along Spout Run Parkway, clouds of mist rose from the breath of the running horde. The river itself was shrouded in mist as we rose up across the Key Bridge into the City. A friend (Jonathan) jumped from the crowd as planned at mile 4 and ran several miles with us. We crossed under the Kennedy Center and into the memorial section of the run. Running the Mall during the marathon is as fun as running the Mall always is. The end of the run is a bit of a grind, but I got'er done.

Many thoughts occur as I near the mid-point of this improbable project. It appears, for one, that I will finish the job. I should be more than half way done in the next year or so. It's now 12.5 years since my aerobic phase began, probably 11.5 years in the running period. I am a decade into the marathon project. And it still feels like a project. Probably a 20 year plan is reasonable.