All things considered, I was happy with the run. I haven't had a very good base under me (I think I only had one or two 50 mile weeks), and caught a nasty cold a few weeks ago. But I think this race puts me in a good position to dip well under 3:00 next year with a solid winter and spring. I started with my friend Chris and for a number of reasons, we started about 6 minutes after the gun. Even though I had an elite number and it probably would have been better for the race, things worked out ok. But we were weaving in and out of runners for the first 6 miles, which slowed things down quite a bit. I was hoping to make the half in 1:35, but it ended up being about 1:37-1:38. I also ran into Cameron and went with him for a little while (and I'm afraid I might be the one responsible for his crashing at the end of the race--sorry). My second half was better in about 1:30 even with a bathroom stop and a shoelace stop. I'll post my mile splits in a bit, but there's my post for now. I think I could have easily broken 3:00 with better weather and starting closer to the front, but I did qualify for Boston and plan to go for the 2:40s next year. This was only my second marathon and in the first I started with my mom (the first six miles at 8:30 pace) and finished the last six hurt (the middle 14 were in the 6-6:30 range). After that race, I was hurt pretty bad for a few months and wasn't able to train consistently for quite a while. This year was much better because I am sore but definitely not hurt. So, even though it was not an ideal race by any stretch, it was a confidence builder for me. Here are my splits for the race (two of the slow miles at the end were due to a bathroom and a shoelace break): 1: 8:20 2: 8:20 (Lots of weaving these first two miles). We were still weaving for a few more, but the first couple were pretty slow. 3: 7:18 4: 7:17 5: 7:18 6: 6:39 7: 6:32 8: 7:58 (Tried to take it easy on Veyo) 9: 8:02 10: 7:05 11: 7:40 12: 7:19 13: 7:01 14: 7:01 15: 6:42 16: 6:36 17: 7:06 18: 6:18 19: 7:57 20: 7:04 21: 6:29 22: 7:18 23: 6:53 24: 6:49 25: 6:50 26: 6:56 .21: 1:26 (I'm not quite sure how everyone is figuring the pace on this, so I'm not sure how fast this was)
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