Wow what a day. Up at 1:40 a.m this morning. I had set the alarm for 3 a.m but Myler thought I needed to get up a little earlier. Finally home in STG at 6:30 p.m. Here's what happened in the middle. Dave and I stayed at my uncles in Orem. We left his house at 3:20 a.m to make the rounds and pick up James, Steve H, Walter, and Paul P. Got on the bus at 4 a.m and road up to the start. It was nice up at the start but wet from lots of rain. Had 2 good potty stops and then one more 3 min's before the race stared right off the road before the gun. I've been running Garmin-less since mine kicked the bucket so I wore my wife's Timex and I failed to get most of the splits. Thats why I like a garmin because it thinks for you.... First 5 miles in 29:03. I'm in like 20th place trying to hold back and just run easy. A big pack went out faster and then there was a smaller second pack of Steve A, Holt, Walter and a couple other guys. I actually was falling off this pack. But my plan was to just run easy until at least the half. No race mode just try and get some muscle memory back. 13 miles in 1:16:52. I'm not sure what the half spit was but guessing like 1:17:20. Up to here I had run just as planned. Didn't worry about the race. Didn't care how far back I was from everyone else. But the legs were just heavy. From mile 6 they got heavy. Never cramped just felt like steel beams. Plus we had rain from the start to about mile 14 or 15. Sometimes heavy pounding rain... but luckily no wind to speak of. 20 miles in 1:58:37. From the half to mile 20 was a weird section. I caught up to Dave somewhere a long the line and it was good to be working together for a while. I told him my wife was at mile 19 and that if things didn't change I was thinking about DNFing and just getting in a solid 20 mile workout. He jumped on the bandwagon and by 17 announced that "he was done and stopping". I said lets just run to the mouth of the canyon where Mik'L was and then decide. So as we came around the corner out of the canyon I could see the girls and said "what do ya think"? Dave said lets just finish but it's gonna be ugly. I agreed and said we'd be real lucky to even break 2:40 since the "downhill" was done and we were approaching the long straight shot through Provo. 23 miles in 2:16:49. Something changed as we stared running on the flat section. Dave started to pull away from me and I started to feel a little groove. I think at 20 I felt it was safe to finally turn it on and finally start racing. So I started clipping off even 6 min miles when I thought I'd be lucky to hold 6:30's. Along here I pass Steve A. and am settled into a smooth stride for the first time all race. 24 miles 2:22:52 ran this mile in 6:03 and was tuned into 6 min pace. 25 miels in 2:28:55 ran it in 6:02- Finally catch the "white and blue shirt guy" just before the overpass and he just waves me by without a fight. 26.2 miles in 2:36:20- Happy to have ran the last 10k in a decent fashion. It seemed it was going to be much worse from early in the race. Overall I was really happy with the race. All I wanted was to come up and have a positive running experience and tune out some decent tempo miles. I didn't want to "race" from the gun and try for any money. Just to have something positive to get me going again before a summer of good training. I was please to work through the heavy legs bug and turn out a 6 min avg marathon knowing I've got a lot more to give. It will be really good to start doing more tempo runs once a week or so and that will help as I've been running 7 min pace for about 16 months now. It was a great course. I'd love to come back in real race shape to see what could happen. I'll run it again for sure. It was totally fun to have dinner with some friends the night before and see others at the race and stuff. It got me really excited to be out competing again. When's the next race? | 