turned out, it was my running buddies that had dropped back. i was moving so slow they caught up to me. they were running for 3 minutes and walking for 1 minute, so i decided to try and stay with them as long as possible. this was my first good decision of the race. soon we were encouraging each other. the three of us all hit low points, but the other two would pull the one through it.
at the 20 mile mark we caught up to my wife and one of our other running buddies. both of them had been fighting injuries for a few weeks and had decided to 