After a night of binge eating to prepare for the marathon today I felt fat and bloated. I foolishly ate food i didn't normally eat and went to a mexican place and thought cactus salad was a good idea. it wasn't but i ate it anyway. the burrito and chips were really good though. After we decided to go to ben and jerry's. I got a large ice cream cone with peanut butter cookie dough and bananas on the rum. can't say enough good things about the latter. wow i felt fat. anyways i ate lots in the morning. bowl of cereal, tea, then pre race egg and cheese on a plain bagel at dunkin donuts. ate a chocolate chip cliff bar immediately before the race... maybe i'm weird but i find confidence in knowing i have more fuel than anyone else. i have an extremely strong stomach and can handle large amounts of food without feeling sick. Got a good bit of last night's food out before the race. Race director was absolutely crazy but the race was extremely well done so no complaints. Started out comfortably in 8th place. The course was 2 out and backs, 10k out and 10k back and then about 7 out and back the other way. Haynes was way too close to me at the first 10k but i decided i was going to push it only in the last 10k if i could hold my place which i felt good about. one guy pulled away over the next 10k i was with but i had beaten him in previous races and felt strong so i was hopeful i could reel him in when the time was right. i ate consistently shot blocks. went through 3 bags. brought gu along but it was too gross. had some potatoes with salt at the aid stations. drank a lot. felt full the whole race which i kind of like. i hate the empty feeling. after about mile 18 i saw the guy that pulled away earlier who now seemed disoriented like he was delirious and couldn't follow the trail. I passed him and then almost immediately a guy who was originally in 2nd place. he made excuses that he hadn't trained properly and told me how he was in 2nd earlier. (for like the first 6 miles!) not too hard. I had also passed another guy not too long before without any effort. Didn't feel like i was struggling or pushing too hard and felt excited to be in 5th place in a field of close to 250 I think. The turn arounds can be either good or bad. You can either feel comfort that you have a solid lead on your competitors or be very afraid. I ended up forgetting the top to my water bottle and would have gone back but a guy who i know finishes strong was only ~30 sec back. Not a fun time with no top. I just guzzled it Amazingly it was brought to the next aid station by the volunteers which was absolutely incredible and made my day! So I decided it was time to push. I hadn't pushed yet and actually ran the 7 miles back 2 minutes faster than I ran it out. I kept looking back but no one was there. When I saw only 2.2 miles left and the time I was at I felt confident that I could stay away since i felt so good and strong. I bonked though with 0.4 miles left but luckily it was mostly downhill. I finished in 3:36.50 which is sadly my fastest marathon time since i've only ever run mountain trail marathons or a marathon as part of an ironman. One of the guys just in front of me about 5 minutes ran a 2:43 at Boston this year. This gives me hope that I might be able to break 2:50. I'll be happy with a 2:54 though. I feel like I need to be disappointed soon, the season and training are so far going far too well. The next big race is July 12th in Iceland. 34 miles. I'm kind of scared how expensive it's going to be, but excited!
Will definitely not run tomorrow! For the first time I didn't get a headache after a long race. I was almost hydrated. You really can't seem to drink enough. Also, beat Haynes easily by ~9 minutes for anyone interested :)
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