It's Official: 4:55:08 and 43:26!

After noticing the difference in chip time early Tuesday morning, I e-mailed the marathon and Jo Williams responded, "Our computer sytem that is linked to the chips was set for 7 a.m. The gun was delayed however and didn’t go off until 34 secs later. This wasn’t corrected originally and the timing company therefore had to adjust the computer on Sun. night and reset the website times."

A reader of this blog (and fellow Houston Strider), Victor Kaiser had pointed out that they had adjusted the 5K times as well.

I e-mailed Jo back, thanked her for the response (as she had answered a couple of other questions and resolved some issues earlier during the registration process) and posed the following: "So the same thing happened in the 5K just 20 minutes later? Here everyone's time increased by 45 seconds (this was pointed out to me by a fellow runner late this morning .. to which I checked and noticed on my daughter's (and her pacer's .. and others) time as well)?"

Jo responded: "Yes, same thing, we had some cars on the course that had to be cleared so the start was delayed."

I'm not too frustrated about my time. (It just gives me 34 more seconds worth of room for improvement!) Once I got past the finish line, I was so elated to get under 5 hours that I didn't get my watch stopped in time. Therefore, I had nothing to compare too. Others, however, had their doubts from the onset.

Another regular reader of this blog, with well-placed connections, felt like the corrections on the full and the half marathon was right on the money (and with that I'm happy).

I just think that the marathon's touting of their technological advances are a bit hyped and overblown. Don't get me wrong! Great event! Getting in and out of and around the George R. Brown this year was much easier because we didn't have the Super Bowl chewing up space, but Boston's ability to track runners through their web site at every 5K split is just a tad bit more impressive.

And the continuing dialogue that most kids are resilient proved to be true with my 9-year-old, Waverly! When I told her, she was disappointed that it wasn't a faster time ... she frowned, then smiled as if to say: "Oh well." All of this while she had the medal around her neck still from wearing it to school!

As I told J. Fred Duckett in an e-mail this morning, "The fact that she was out there doing 3.1 miles at that age is something that I'm very proud of her of --- regardless of her time!"