Forged in the sleepless air travel, an album of photos from the Pittsburgh Marathon.
I tried uploading the images as a WordPress Photo Gallery (TM) so I think if you click on them they embiggen biggly.
Parking in a Lot… It would later to be a lot of hassle. ZING!
Fifteen dollars?! Parking Lot Robbery… and insult and injury would only get worse when trying to leave.
Two hours early was way too early…
The Road To Corrals
The Road to Corrals Continues
This church offered up its basement as shelter from the winds… and provided honest-to-goodness bathrooms, a luxury in a land of Port-A-Johns.
A temporary corral fence outside the August Wilson Center
The Starting Arch amidst a chilly, windy morn
I posted this to Facebook with the caption, “A fence outside the August Wilson Center? A bit on the nose, don’t you think?”
I liked this blurry guy in the background as I waited for the start.
Make America Run Again.
No, seriously… make America Run Again.
Ditching my heat blanket, I prepared for the 7:05 AM start… fool that I am in more ways than one.
Still waiting…
A View Behind From the “A” Corral
A View Ahead From The “A” Corral
Still waiting…
After a two minute warning, the race announcer came back on and said, “In just 4 minutes, you’ll start an amazing 26.2 mile journey!” They kept delaying the start without an explanation or saying they were delyaing, opting instead to reannouncie the time ’til…
Moments before the gun went off… in the anticipatory lull, a funny guy behind me shouted, “Runners Set… FIVE MINUTES until we start… no, seven minutes!”
The Pittsburgh Opera House is so Pittsburghian in architecture and aesthetics.
On the road again…
Heading toward the first of I think it was five bridges…
To the bridge…
I’m on a bridge!
Deutschland… not to be confused with the theme park Dutch Wonderland
Tunneling through
Roading along in my sneakers
Anytime I see one of these train cars, I wonder if Werner Herzog owns a piece of the action.
On the street…
Past the stadium
I’ve been here before… on the opposite side of the street is the Lumpy Fred Rogers statue.
Another bridge
A bridge too far?
Overhead
Now I’m on this bridge!
The sun comes out
Still windy and a bit chilly but pretty ideal running weather
Not on the turnpike, just sponsored by them
Heading toward the split between the half and full course routes
Getting ready to split from the half marathoners
Just after the split… the loneliness of the long distance runner
At least I was on the right track
Bridge 3
The Stephen Foster Memorial
A better shot of the Foster Memorial
Uncle Ned and Foster are there…
God light?
Shakespeare.
Mozart runs this place… MOZART! What does he know about being a super?
I don’t know what this is and I need to google it. I just thought as I ran past it, “Frickin’ Pittsburgh, man….”
Tunnels
A bad hair day in the head wind tunnels of Pittsburgh
The GreyHound Cheer-a-Thon mile was filled with grey hounds… and puns.
It all felt oh so Pittsburgh
The hair day didn’t improve with mileage.
Step by step….
With the sun shining
Amongst the woods of Pennsylvania.
Crawling toward empty
Seriiously bad hair
Trying to put on a happy face — if you fake it, sometimes you make it.
Back past the Opera…
Closing in
Towards the finish
I think I beat Captain America. On your left.
Post run foods… meh.
The throngs of finishers
Exiting the finisher chute I was struck by the choices that lay before me…
One could actually exit through the gift shop… I went right and bypassed it though.
Truth.
Things they could have told me BEFORE I finished…
After a delayed check out (thanks to the Motel 6 staff for letting me grab a shower even though I was crazy late exiting the infernal parking garage conflagration of idiocy), I stopped at this convenience store to grab a soda. Eat your heart out, Mauice Sendak.
