AM park city marathon 5 th overall and 1st in age group. 2:53:08. Things went as planned stay with the lead group and push after mile 16. The race started very slow we had a group of six through mile 3-4. Nathan H. picked it up a little the next stretch and our group changed to three. Nathan, Ben and Me. I was content to sit on Ben for the next six miles and Nathan gap us by about 15 seconds. As we hit the Highway that goes to Kamas things started to change. Dave Spence came up on us and I sensed him feeling nervous about letting Nathan go. He asked if I knew what he could do, Nathan had told me earlier in the race that he was fit to run a 2:30 in the valley, (I told him PC was a different thing though-- Dirt trail, elevation, climb for over 15 miles from the start and the finish is rolling at best, not the down hill last 8 as they claim) So I told Spence he could hit 2:34 or so today. Our group was over Spence started to reel in Nathan, and Ben tryed to go with him. Now it was all singles for the remainder of the race. Just before 11 Steve Olson passed me this told me I had slowed down. Another runner passed again at about mile 13. I was now in sixth overall. I tryed to stay even but the grade of the next 3 miles just keep slowing me down. Took a Gel at mile 14 and figured it would take effect by the 16 where I planned to push. It did. I passed the guy who passed me around 13 back around mile 18 and started to pick things up. Was hitting some 6:10 to 6:15 miles. Now I was in the slower half marathon runners I don't like this part but it does give you other things you need to focus on, like not running them over. I always stay on your left or right and they seem to always move opposite to what you wanted. Anyway not a problem. The last part of the course is winding so you can't really see who is right in front of you and when you can you don't know if they are halfs or in the full. So I push but half hearted not knowing if someone is right ahead of me. Turned out that Steve slowed the last 3 miles but I never saw him he finished exactly a minute ahead of me. Overall a nice training run for the real marathons, I don't count this as a real marathon, it is not certified and is usually short or long, today it was short. I was 3 minutes and 28 seconds faster than last year, a new PC marathon PR. It would have got me a 2nd overall last year. Not sore much so I will run tonight and start some real training.
PM ran 7 miles around SHP 8:00 avg |