I need to make this brief for the moment as I'm very tired and my stomach is not happy. But, I'm still in the stage of 'I can't believe it'. If these race results are official, I qualified for Boston! I screamed, I laughed, and I cried. More details later. OK...here's a bit more info. about the race and experience. The weather today was perfect for running the marathon. I started running at 6:52 am and the temp was about 56 outside. When I finished 4 hours later the temp was about 63. I ran this marathon taking walk breaks every 4 minutes with the break lasting 45 seconds. The race had a record number of runners for the event and it was indeed congested. My target pace was between 9:00 and 9:15 per mile. The first 7.6 miles my AP was 9:12, next 5.5 miles AP was 8:54, next 6.9 miles AP was 9:14 and the last 6.2 miles my AP was 10:10. I was pleased with the my pace for warm up at 9:12 and the 8:54 AP dropped as a result of some down hills. The next 6.9 miles had lots of ups which were followed by downs, but I just seem to remember all the ups! But, it went well. During the 3rd part of the marathon, came across an elderly man that was shooting for a sub 4 marathon and he saw that we were taking walk breaks so he hung out with us for a while an actually pushed up our pace a bit. It helped my to get through all of those hills and he was encouraging me that I was going to reach my goal. I think he was probably my angel, but because of the push through the hills boy howdy did I feel it the last 3 to 4 miles of the marathon. You can see that my pace dropped significantly and that probably occurred around mile 23. Around mile 23 I hit the wall. My legs didn't cramp, but they were toast. As I walked through one of the water stations I took some water and thought I'd have some GU to see if that would help me get through the last 3 miles. I was even starting to see black spots. I tried to keep moving forward and kept glancing at my watch, calculating if I was really going to be able to do this. The last mile, once I got back on the Embarcadero road, I just grit my teeth and pressed on. When I saw the finish line I found some more grit from somewhere and just kept on going. I stopped my watch after I crossed the timing mechanism, glanced at it and I couldn't believe that it looked like I made it! In comparison to the other SFMarathons that I've run, I could really tell that I was much better trained. It really helped my a lot through my training to refer to several of the blogs on this website. Thanks to Sno, Carolyn and Bonnie. You probably didn't know that you helped, but you did! I benefited from your experience, training programs, and encouragement. Today is the 'day after' and I'm feeling pretty good. As Sno says, I would say on a scale of 1-10, I have about level 5 monkey legs but the thing that is really bothersome to me right now is my stomach. I'm eating and drinking to refuel and hydrate my body, but when my food gets to the intestinal level, I'm in trouble. Don't know if it's because of pushing my body to its' limit or what. I just do hope it will settle back down soon. I have a question regarding the Boston Marathon now. I've been reading their website and gathering some info and I was wondering if with a qualifying time in 2010 I could still use the time to run the Boston in April of 2012 (rather than 2011). I suppose I could continue to work and train hard (which I will) to qualify again in 2011, but what if I don't make it in 2011? Can I use my 2010 time? Well, fellow bloggers, again, thanks for all of your encouraging words! Oh...wish I could give you mile splits, but I don't have a Garmin...maybe one of these days!
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