Crystal City - 2006 MCM

I didn’t like Crystal City. There wasn’t anything wrong with the city itself. It’s just positioned in a bad place on the course. I was coming down off my bridge high, and knew that I had to run through Crystal City and back before I could finish. I was so close to the finish line, but not close enough.

Entering Crystal City I saw Olga. She was running out when I was running in. She was happy and smiling. It was good to see her having fun and getting close to finishing. We didn’t stop running, but we waved to each other and said a few words of encouragement.

As I continued to run I tried to keep on the lookout for other coworkers. I saw one other guy - the guy who trained us. He was a little bit behind Olga, which means she passed him somewhere. I was happy for her. Again, we didn’t stop running. Just said, “Hi! See you at the finish.”

There is a real tricky part to the course when running in Crystal City. Around mile 22 there are some people handing out free beer. I had been warned about this before. I was told that beer is bad when running a marathon. Even though I could take a beer or two and walk to the finish, that wasn’t the smart thing to do. I almost did it anyway. I’m not sure what made me keep running. I think I just wanted to go ahead and finish without dragging the end out. I also wanted to finish close to 5.5 hours, and that was within striking distance, but only if I kept running. So I ran.

At the turn around in Crystal City they were supposed to be having a Street Spectacular. I ran passed an empty stage. I didn’t think it was all that spectacular. I also wasn’t impressed with the people on the sides. Throughout the rest of the race the spectators had been cheering everyone on pretty well. In Crystal City it felt like people were waiting to cheer only for the people they knew. Every now and then someone would yell out my name, but for the most part the people just stood there and watched me run by. A lot of them didn’t even smile.