20th Marathon

I ran my 20th marathon today. 25th, if you count longer events that involved running 26.2 miles.

Tomorrow is the big local marathon - the Chicago Marathon. Today's event was in the northern suburbs, and had a much smaller crowd of runners.

It was a trail run, along the Desplaines River, all parkland. Here was the view from where I parked my car:



Muted hues, nothing harsh,
as morning rises on the marsh.

Here was the starting line:


I was very happy with my run, which came in at 4:51, which was 6 minutes faster than last year's time. Actually, it's my best marathon time since 2005, by several minutes. Maybe the experiment in carbo-loading worked!

Or maybe I was better rested.
It's hard to know which variable was tested.