I did it.  Avg pace: 15:42; I finished the race in 3:25:42.  It was not as good as I had hoped–but way good enough considering how many Birmingham hills we went up and down, and up and down again.  At the end I was wheezing and wished I had an inhaler–it’s been a good three years since I had to deal with this kind of stuff. I guess the combination of all that climbing and cold  had my lungs confused. 
It is a strange and beautiful thing, this kind of event.  I wanted to jump out of my skin right before we started with 4000+ anxious people crowding in.  They kept referring to the those of us who were not running as “The Walkers”. That amused me. I kept weeping along the way and I could never figure out why, except this mattered a lot to me.  The people cheering you on is delightful. I wish I had had the time to stop and take pictures.  In the crystal clear air of a cold winter morning, from the highest vantage points of the race I felt like I could see forever.  Birmingham is sort of cool, especially around the Five Points area.  And now it is over.  I will spend far more time at airports today than I spent rocking the asphalt.  My feet hurt and if I could, I’d put them in a bucket of ice water.  But that is that; Marsha and I are talking about the next one.