This race was awesome and exceeded all my expectations. I would highly recommend it to anybody that is thinking of coming to run it. It was freezing cold for the few hours that we (Mark and I) waited at the athletes village before the race started, but it warmed up very quickly. In fact, I got me a good sun burn on the right side of my body.
The plan was to take it easy, mainly because I wanted to enjoy things, but also because I wasn't in good enough shape to run it all out. I stuck to the plan extremely well and never felt out of my comfort zone. Walked through all the water stations, and really just enjoyed things.
Here are my 5k splits according to the Boston website.
5K 23:17 10K 46:56 15K 1:10:59 20K 1:34:39 Half 1:39:45 (perfect) 25K 1:58:22 30K 2:22:41 35K 2:47:16 40K 3:11:15
7:43 overall pace Splits from my watch: 7:24, 7:18, 7:35, 7:33, 7:33, 7:28, 7:24, 7:35, 8:00 (bathroom stop), 7:31, 7:36, 7:32, 7:29, 7:36, 7:37, 7:26, 7:49, 7:43, 7:40, 7:49, 8:05, 7:29, 7:29, 7:51, 7:36, 8:00, 3:48. I obviously measured the course long at 26.53, but I was happy that I ran the second half only about 2:30 slower than the first half, and my splits were very even throughout.
Started off in corral 3 and realized that all the people around me were planning on running a lot faster than me. Wellesley and everything from about Boston College (mile 20ish) to the end were probably some of the best running moments of my life. It was so awesome and exhilirating. In fact, all the guys I was running with for the half mile leading up to Wellesley were commenting on how cool this part of the race is, and it lived up to it. It's so cool to hear the yells beforehand and then once you leave you can hear them for a bit. I realized that despite the fact that I was running pretty easily, it is still hard to run 26.2 miles and my legs started feeling it around the Newton Hills. Despite the fact that the hills were tough, I think I was in better shape than most of the other people I was around. Mark caught up to me around mile 16 or so and we ran together for a bit, but then I pulled ahead. I've never been able to run all the way through a marathon until this one, but it was just so awesome that I couldn't stop. Just tried to really enjoy things up through the finish line. Great experience and glad I did it. Really hope to build off of this and train pretty diligently for the UVM half. Maybe with some focused work on the half I will be able to pull something great off.
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