They give you a medal just for finishing — which was kind of a feat, in my case. Photo by jby.

So I’m home and more-or-less recovered from marathon number five, the Mankato Marathon. Final time: 3 hours, 33 minutes, and 32 seconds. Which, it happens, is five whole seconds better than my last marathon back in June. At two marathons a year with this kind of improvement, I’ll qualify for Boston some time before my 200th birthday.

I tried to tweet a couple images, but this one was pretty rough going, and I had other things on my mind. Like making it to the finish line. I’m sure Mankato is a lovely town, but there’s not enough of it to contain a whole 26.2-mile course, so most of the first two-thirds of the race were out in the middle of open farmland, with nothing to block a pretty persistent wind. Which wind was good for thermoregulation, but made running perceptibly harder.

Even so, I finished the first 23 miles in under three hours, setting what I’m pretty sure is a personal record for a half-marathon. That was too fast — by the last three miles, I didn’t have anything left. I ended up walking a depressing amount of the home stretch. Just like the last time around, I crossed the finish line to Cake’s cover of “I will survive,” and I felt every word.

Of course, it wasn’t just about the race this time round, and Denim and Tweed readers came through strong at the finish, donating enough to Minnestotans United for All Families to hit my $500 goal before the race even started. You folks rock!

(Of course, it’s still possible to donate if you didn’t get around to it. But this will be the last time I pester you about it here, I swear!)

And but so now I’m looking forward to spending the next three days or so unable to easily climb stairs. Also, trying to decide whether I really want to do a sixth one of these things. (Spoiler: I probably will, once I can climb stairs again.)◼