I went in this race with high hopes (as usual). Afterall, it’s always best to be confident, right? My training was going great and everything felt very easy. I felt like I could run 5:30-5:40 pace forever the last few long runs and the mileage never made me too tired. Then the weather changed. It was in the 50s- low 60s and dry for most of the big workouts during the last few months. But it was 68 with 100% humidity for this morning’s race. I should have been smart and dropped down to the 5 miler or ran the half much more conservatively.
Sadly, in my excitement to race I ran with the lead pack for the first 6 miles—which felt so easy it was a joke to go low 5:20s. Then out of nowhere my legs started to get heavy. I wasn’t breathing hard or anything but my legs just weren’t moving fast enough to keep up with the pack. Then we started going uphill and my pace slowed even further. I tried to surge several times but my legs were all but shot 7-8 miles in and then it just got worse. I was not even suffering that much but rather my legs simply refused to move. It’s happened in nearly all of my races lately.
My guess is my legs are tired from a full marathon buildup without the taper. I took a day off and an easy day and it was obviously not enough to allow me to recover. I’ve come to this conclusion due to the fact that it felt so easy for 6 miles and that if I had tapered or had been doing short long runs, I’d have been able to hang on to the pack longer as my legs would have been fresher.
It’s really disheartening to suffer through yet another awful race. It’s safe to say that I will NEVER run this race again. I always say I’ll never run it again but this time I mean it. The weather is always terrible and you can’t get any worse this time of year than 68-70 with a 68-70 dew point.
update: after a few days I think a combination of things happened but mostly my legs just were not recovered enough going in to truly run my best and the heat just made it worse. I need to make sure I rest up for Chicago.
Results
![](<a href="https://imgur.com/9XDLSbI"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/9XDLSbI.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>) 
Me breaking off the pack to get a bottle of water from my teammate. I felt like a million bucks here and it was at mile 5 or so. All of a sudden after mile 6 or so my legs felt very heavy and they refused to move. Guess all that mile caught up with me. Humid as f$ck too.
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