Short story: Goal met! Chip time of 2:57:53 went in right with bedoukian (he beat me although same chip time). We pretty much needed each other to go that fast. More to come later (after a bath, some ibuprofen, and a beer).
Night before: Ate at ihop a large thing of french toast and hash browns, then went to get a pizza lol and I ate 1/3 of that (bedoukian ate a full half of it). Got horrible sleep, but in a hotel, the night before a marathon it wasn't too too bad. Pre-race morning: Up at 5:30 Ate muffin, bagel, 2 cups coffee went to start around 7:30. Temps were about 47 at start, perfect. But it heated up quickly (probably my only slight complaint for the whole day).
Race started at 8:30, bedoukian and I trashed our shirts, and it was on. I took my honey/coffee mixture pretty regularly and consumed 700-800 calories of it total plus probably 100 calories of gatorade at the aid stations.
Splits (I was using half mile auto lap on my garmin so this is gonna get complicated 1: 3:27.4, 3:25.1 : 6:52.5 conservative first few miles
2: 3:24.9, 3:29.6 : 6:54.5
3: 3:19.6, 3:15.6 : 6:35.2 downhills
4: 3:21.7, 3:14.6 : 6:36.3
5: 3:26.2, 3:12.9 : 6:39.1
6: 3:27.6, 3:26.8 : 6:54.4 ran with some other people wanting to go sub 3
7: 3:23.1, 3:25.2 : 6:48.3
8: 3:23.8, 3:24.1 : 6:49.9 decided to ditch them
9: 3:21.0, 3:25.6 : 6:46.6
10: 3:22.8, 3:31.2 : 6:54.0 dont know why these miles were slow, didn't feel slow but didn't hurt either maybe slightly rolling hills (but only to a person used to running downhill at this point)
11: 3:31.5, 3:14.0 : 6:54.5
12: 3:26.8, 3:25.3 : 6:52.1
13: 3:18.1, 3:28.9 : 6:47.0 (hit the half at 1:28:47)
14: 3:20.4, 3:42.7 : 7:03.1 (both bedoukian and I stopped to poop at different locations and although I was faster, bedoukian caught me very quickly which was good)
15: 3:24.5, 3:21.8 : 6:46.3
16: 3:26.4, 3:22.5 : 6:48.9
17: 3:16.1, 3:20.9 : 6:37.0 from here to 21 I started pushing it
18: 3:21.1, 3:19.0 : 6:40.1
19: 3:25.2, 3:21.0 : 6:46.2
20: 3:23.5, 3:18.0 : 6:41.5
21: 3:23.8, 3:24.0 : 6:47.8
22: 3:28.3, 3:22.2 : 6:50.5 we both started hurting on this mile, was definitely the longest feeling mile of the race
23: 3:26.1, 3:24.6 : 6:50.7 right hip flexor not working right, shortening stride significantly
24: 3:28.9, 3:30.0 : 6:58.9 left quad beginning to fail/sieze up
25: 3:27.7, 3:23.6 : 6:51.3 continuation of previous pain but pushing effort (if not pace) nonetheless
26: 3:30.7, 3:20.4 : 6:51.1 went through several stages of feeling good/wanting to die, yeah you know what I am talking about
26.2: 1:05 (5:25 pace) bedoukian realized we could break 2:58 if we floored it, hit a half-runner as I was doing my final surge 20m from the finish, bedoukian probably could have outkicked me if he wanted here because this person cut me off.
Incredibly my garmin actually said 26.20 miles right at the finish.
Overall I would say quite even splits. First half was in 1:28:47 and the second was 1:29:05 which included at least a 15 second poo break including slowing down, pooping, and speeding up again... yes I am that fast. Who knows what would have happened had bedoukian and I not run together the whole time. I was wanting to surge at mile 20 seeing people we could pass (all of whom we did eventually pass anyway). But then towards the end I was probably dieing more than he was. I think that he would have beaten me even if I had surged at 20 like I wanted to. Without the support I would probably have done miles 24, 25, and 26 around 7:30 pace. So I think we have answered the question on endurance vs. speed on the road for us. It falls very close to the marathon. I am pretty confident that I would have won a 23 mile race, probably 24, and bedoukian probably would win a 25M race or above.
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