Marathon to Marathon

Wow, this race sucked. Well, not the race, but the weather.  The race is a small town race just a couple hours away from home, starting in Storm Lake, IA, running to the tiny town of Marathon, running through the Iowa countryside along country roads next to farms and corn fields.  It's a fairly well organized event, it's just that the weather this year sucked.  The course itself doesn't offer much if any shade, and temperatures this year were excessively warm and humid, even with a 6 am start.  I ran a very decent half in 2 hours even, but then the sun just baked the life right out of me after that.  Plus, the last 10 miles were with the wind at my back, which offered no real cooling potential, and it just became incredibly hard to run.  To make matters worse, my stomach was getting nauseous with each passing step past mile 15.  By mile 20, my "running" was officially done and I literally walked the rest of the way, sucking on ice chips hoping I wouldn't throw up.  I didn't feel overly bad since the weather was also affecting everyone else around me the same way.  Temperatures by mid morning for those last 6 miles were in the 80s, with no relief in sight.  As I crossed the finish line and sat down, I promptly threw up, but then I felt so much better.  It was my second worst race ever, but that's OK.  They can't all be sunshine and roses, and it is one step closer to completing my marathon state streak. Moving forward.