A Tale of Two Duckies

Almost four years ago, Boyfriend and I ran the Rome Marathon. It was his first marathon and if I remember correctly he trained pretty well for the event. Long story short, we both got pretty sick the day of the marathon. I felt like I had a fever the night before the race and my throat was really sore (I ran the entire marathon with a cough drop lodged in my cheek so it wouldn't hurt). The night of the marathon I broke out in hives and Boyfriend was a puddly, feverish mess with a very sore throat. We're pretty sure we had both had strep throat (as a side note, in Italy you can buy antibiotics over the counter).

Boyfriend clocked a 4:41 that day and I ran a 5:09, I think. We were both expecting to do a little better than that, but it was obviously not an optimal day for either of us to be running. At the time, my PR was a 4:54.

Spring forward a year and my marathon PR dropped. In March 2008 I ran a 4:35 at Napa and thus eclipsed Boyfriend's (default) PR of 4:41.

You can imagine the level of ribbing I gave him; Telling him I was a faster runner and all. Ha ha. His half PR is about 15 minutes faster than mine so I know if he hadn't been sick he'd easily run me down. But until you go out there and perform, I keep getting to say I'm the fastest marathoner in the household.

My marathon PR kept dropping and I kept teasing. So I guess he got sort of sick of it all and decided he was going to run a marathon on the same day as me so we could once and for all put this little debate to rest. Enter, the TEXAS MARATHON (dun, dun, DUN).

And well, you all know how that ended.

Scroll back up, that is my duck on the left, Boyfriend's duck on the right. If my math skills do not fail me, I am pretty sure that 71 < 95.

Disclaimer: Yes, I realize he had an injury which detrimentally affected his training going into the race. And I realize that he was running in the lead on said sub-par training before his knee died. I just choose to ignore these facts.