This past Sunday the city shut down for the Vienna City Marathon. Over 30,000 people flooded the streets of Vienna, .

A student and I decided to train for the half-marathon this year, and despite a rushed training schedule, were able to finish the race without too much trouble. I achieved my goal of under 2 hours, just barely, coming in at 1:56:22. Good enough to beat the Kenyans leading the marathon pack. Of course they only needed 12 extra minutes to run twice as far as me, but that’s another story.

After a 2 year hiatus from any run longer 5K, it was a lot of fun to train and run this race, and I’m hoping it’ll be a springboard to other runs in my ongoing struggle to maintain motivation.

It was also neat to see a student of mine, who only started running two years ago, get really excited about training and running this race. He’s come a long way in such a short amount of time.