Running the World... One City at a Time.

My day started at 3:15am. I didn't want it to start until 4:15am but a little nervousness woke me up an hour early. Tasha dropped me off at the Vernon Werthon park at 4:50am. She wrote a nice motivational quote on my arm to get me through.

I met up with my buddy Matt and we rode on the bus to the starting line together. He has been pushing me to agree to try and finish the marathon in 3:00:00 for a while now, which is a big stretch for me this year. I've been planning to shoot for 3:05-3:10. 6:45am rolled around and the race started. I started back with the 3:25:00 pacer because I couldn't get up to the 3:05 pacer after my 30 minute wait in line for the bathroom. Off we went and, probably because I haven't run much in the last 2 weeks while trying to recover from being sick, I felt GREAT! 6:43 pace until the veyo hill, then slowed enough to hit 13.1 at a 7:01 pace. Matt left me in the dust so I just kept my comfortable pace. I got a HORRIBLE side ache at half way. It was bad enough that I had to walk and could barely breath. After a long walk, a drink of water and coating my side in biofreeze it went away enough that I could start running again. After that I never felt the same. I tightened up and It progressively got harder and more painful. The last few miles were incredibly painful. I lost 10 minutes in the last 13 miles but still felt pretty good about my overall time, 3:15:41, because I gave it all I could. My 100% effort on mile 26 only got me a 9:30/mile. It sure did hurt.

It was a personal record by 14 minutes. Now if I could just do that every year!

Stats below...

1 6'54"

2 6'57"

3 6'42"

4 6'45"

5 6'46"

6 6'37"

7 6'35"

8 7'14"

9 7'39"

10 7'12"

11 7'31"

12 7'16"

13 8'10"

14 7'13"

15 6'52"

16 6'52"

17 7'06"

18 7'43"

19 7'58"

20 7'53"

21 7'10"

22 7'13"

23 7'59"

24 7'48"

25 8'23"

26 9'13"

0.49 8'22"