After our planning last night, I could not find Brent anywhere in the staging area, so I hung out with the 3:10 pace group. Thankfully, Michael, the pace leader, was planning on taking Veyo easy, so this sounded good to me. I unfortunately had my auto-pause turned on on my Garmin, which messed up my splits, as I had two pit stops I made where the Garmin stopped. Therefore, no miles splits at this time. 1/2 marathon split was slightly under 1:35, ran the second half in about 1:40, 5 minute positive split. I had to make a pit stop at mile 18 that cost me about 2 minutes, and at about mile 22, I started to walk a bit. I decided to run the downhills hard and then walk any uphills, as my left calf was tightening up, and I didn't want to risk pulling it. At about mile 24, I hooked up with a guy named Blake, and we tried to pull each other along for the last 2 miles. By this time, my legs were totally trashed, and I was struggling to maintain sub-8:00 miles. Had to take another walking break, then Blake and I powered it home (when I say powered it home, it was more like limped along at 7:30 pace, which was absolutely the fastest I could run at the end). I was so caught up in my suffering and was looking for Lybi on the other side of the road that I missed her and the sign she had made for me, and didn't even hear her calling out to me. Total time was 3:15:00, this is a huge 43 minute PR for me, I am very happy with this time even if I did not hit the BQ this year. I felt very fit aerobically and my lungs could have continued - my poor legs were just hammered. I told Lybi that if I had had some more downhill training, I felt sure I could have brought it in at about 3:05. Congratulations to all the other bloggers out there - everyone did a great job! | 