Most of the year, the blue line marking the marathon course that snakes around Akron is nothing more than a splash of color on drab pavement. But, once a year the course comes to life and the line leads thousands across the city. The Akron Marathon is always so well organized and does so much for our city. What other event can bring thousands of people downtown to start something at 7:00am on a Saturday morning? I snapped this photo from the elevated walkway that connects UA's College of Business and the Polsky parking deck. The edits were done in Lightroom and and I cleaned it up Photoshop.

This was the 4th year in a row that The Chief Source Relay team has run the race. This year's lineup in race order ( years on the team in parantheses) was Jim Merrick (rookie), Mike Morgan (4 years), John Sammartano (3 years), Jeff Bloomhuff (rookie), and I (4 years) ran the anchor leg. We placed a respectable 28th out of 91 teams. Two of our former team members ran longer distances on Saturday. Three year TCS Team Captain Mike Maney left the team to run the half marathon. John Grucella ran the full marathon with a time of 3:08 to qualify for the Boston Marathon. John's marathon time beat our five person relay by about 25 minutes. Amazing. For the record, Greg was invited to join the TCS team, but already had his own.

This was the first year I got to run the final leg of the race. My teammate Jeff passed the relay slap bracelet to me sometime around 9:30. The sky was threatening rain, but all that fell was a mist that kept me cool. I haven't run many races over a 5K so it was tough to gauge what the appropriate pace was. About a mile or two into the run I looked at the runners around me and picked one that looked like someone who was running a smart race. My choice was a guy who was about 45 years old who looked like he was running an even pace I could keep up with. I settled in about 100 feet back and cruised. Every 5 minutes I'd glance up to see how far ahead of me he got and the distance stayed pretty even. This is just one of many distractions I use in order to get through an hour of running. When I got downtown I was pretty spent but when I rounded the corner to enter Canal Park I broke out into a full sprint. I'm expecting a ridiculous photo of the finish.

The best part of the event is the post race celebration in Canal Park. Everyone who ran has a big smile on their face because they are done. Our team sat in the bleachers drinking our complimentary sports beers, eating every last calorie in our bags of food, and watching the crowd. The whole day is a great experience and a reminder of why this place is where I choose to call home.