The finish is the best part of any marathon. They always have something cool at the end of the race. It's called the finish line and it means you can stop running. They usually have other things, like a place for runners to go and grab snacks, massages, or other goodies. But the finish line is the important thing.

After crossing mile post 26 I told Olga and Adriana that they could sprint the last .2 miles. It's kinda a tradition to sprint this last little bit, because you can prove to everyone watching that even though you just ran 26 miles you still have a little bit of energy. Plus, sprinting helps your time, so instead of five hours-forty three minutes-twenty two seconds you can have a time of five hours-forty three minutes-sixteen seconds. Plus if you sprint, you can beat the people you're running with and always remind them about how you beat them in the marathon.

So I told the girls they didn't have to stay with me. I practically had to push them to get them to sprint those last .2 miles. But they eventually turned on the speed. As I saw them leaving me I thought to myself, "No way I'm letting a couple of girls show me up like this!" So I sprinted too. I didn'™t pass them like I wanted to, but they only beat me by a second or two (maybe more, but that's not important).

OBX had a little pirate party set up at the finish line where people were encouraged to do pirate stuff. I would have tried to steal something, but I didn't have the energy and my mother was there. She doesn't like it when I steal stuff.

Olga and I didn't stick around too long at the finish. We didn't even stick around to watch Greg finish. I wish we could have, but we still had to drive back to Maryland and go to work the next day. So we grabbed a ride back to our car, plundered the local McDonald's, then drove off into the sunset.

On the way home we realized that it took us longer to run the 26.2 miles than it took to drive from North Carolina back home to Maryland.