What a cool day! I absolutely loved touring Baltimore on my bike and watching the Marathon unfold. Such a cool way to see a new city. It's great because there were police officers stopping traffic for me at every corner. So I was able to cruise easily back and forth all over the course watching it all go down, snapping pictures, and checking in on Nan's water and food at the aid stations etc. And Nan had such an awesome race. She raced really smart and super tough. I was a bit concerned when I saw her in 2nd place at mile because I thought she might be going out too fast. Especially when the course record holder was 45 seconds behind at that point. I was further concerned, when between 9-10 miles she was losing ground on a group of 6 runners up front, and then the CR holder had brought the gap to 10 seconds and was gaining fast. Its funny because Nan could see my nervousness on my face, she told me after the race. I'm an open book I guess. But she just thought to herself, "he'll see soon enough". I was really hoping I was wrong, and that she was just pacing herself smarter to save for the 4-6 miles of hills coming up. Fortunately that was the case indeed. The CR holder passed Nan at the half marathon point. By Mile 16 (the start of the hill climbing) Nan was only 35 seconds off the leaders. When I saw her next at mile 21 after all the major climbing, she was running in 3rd with a Kenyan girl drafting on her...Awesome!!!! I was so stoked for her at this point. I knew she was going to get at least 3rd, and I still had hope that she could really turn it on on the down hill and catch at least one of the leaders. She then proceeded to drop the Kenyan girl Salome. But at mile 23.7 The lead Russian had already put another minute on her in less than 3 miles. Wow...that girl was flying. Nan held 6:01/mile the last 4 miles, so Nan wasn't totally falling off pace. But in order to even keep the gap at a minute she needed to be doing 5:40s down that hill. Which is obviously a lot harder to do after you've been hammering out 5:50 something average pace for 22 miles up and down hills into seriously STIFF headwinds much of the time. I'm totally impressed with her 2:35:49 performance today. It is an incredible performance. As a perspective for you, that time on that course is probably equivalent to well below 2:30 on the St. George course, and close to 2:30 on the Flat chicago course. There was just nothing easy about the Baltimore course today. The stiff head winds in combo with long stretches of up hill take a serious toll on the pace. I'm so happy for Nan! And I'm already totally stoked to go to the trials with her in 15 months, and for the fun times and trips on the agenda leading up to that. It was also cool to watch Max King and John Crews bust out solid PR's on that course today, both of whom are solidly qualified for the Olympic Trials also. Check out a picture report from the day here.
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