Well what a day. Surely one of the most fun running/racing outings I've ever had. The plan was simple: Pace a group to a sub 3 hour marathon. I wanted to hit the first half in 1:28 then bring it home a little faster. But also that would give us just a little wiggle room if things turned slower. At the start there was 10-15 runners willing to join our force and in the end we finished with 1... One man hit a sub 3 hour marathon with us. Some unknown guys took off and finished ahead of the pack early in the race but most fell back. The one however was Paul Harrmer. A newby to the blog. He lives right around the corner from me and has become a great find as a friend and running buddy. By around 10 miles into the race we realized that Paul would be our only "groupie". We hoped to have Nate Bundy come up and join after the half but never was able to link up. We hit the half in 1:28:40ish (I didn't look too close). Then coming down off the hills we maintained good pace but by Wichester Paul was starting to loose steam. But he battled, over and over again. I could tell he was struggling in many places so Logan and I would force feed him GU's, water, and gatorade. By the time we hit town Paul started to cramp up pretty bad so we backed off the pace... this made things interesting. Logan and I would cheer on Paul and then look at each other saying "it's gona be close man", or "he's not doing that good". I'd redue the math 2 or 3 times a min and everytime we still were on track. Paul would say "I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know where to go" and we'd counter with just stick to our backs and keep going. Once I told Paul to pick out someone in frount of us as a goal to go pick off.... after giving him a chance to look them over I said "who do you want to go get"? His answer was priceless... a shakey " I don't know man"... at the time it was really serious but now to think back it is really funny. Anyways with the help of a cheering crowed we pushed through town and my watch stopped at 2:59:08. I haven't checked the official time or place but we were all thrilled to make it on time. Logan and I loved it. I've always wanted to run the STGM without racing or stressing about things. This was totally a great day and a marathon never to be forgotten. I finished feeling amazing and could have ran home: Not sore at all. So that's nice too!
It was great to see all the other bloggers... a beutiful day here in the STG.
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