Well here it is, my first real marathon. Last year I ran Mid Mountain Marathon (Trail Marathon in PC) in 3:11 where the goal was just to complete the distance and didn't really reflect the challenges of a real marathon. First I'd like to talk about things I learned while it's fresh. My training wasn't the best so I was shooting for 2:50, but that went right out the door when the race started and I settled into what was a comfortable pace with a good group including James. I think my success today came from being conservative, in only my second attempt at the distance there is still a lot that can go wrong. Also there's still a lot of learning to be done, unlike most races competitive runners do, the marathon takes a huge buildup and can only be run a few times a year (or more if you're Steve Anderson). But all the other distances have been built up to and we learn how to race then and how you're supposed to feel in a race. The difference for the marathon is just how easy the pace should feel for a while and how you react to being around people and how you're body reacts to nutrition and hydration. These things take time to learn and taking a couple of stabs below full effort can help a lot. My first marathon was just finish and this one was try to run a conservative time and qualify for Boston. I think these things took a lot of pressure off today and let me explore how to race a marathon and tings to learn and improve for that race where I truly leave everything on the table. Second is I am learning how my body reacts to the distance, both races I did the first thing to go was my legs. They start getting really sore and crampy and that continues after the race, this ended up first hitting around mile 18.5 and really got bad around mile 22. One thing that made a noticeable difference was dousing my quads with water to cool and help hydrate them, a trick I learned from my college teammate Max who has had similar quad issues in races. Third I found how I react to the pace, I managed to keep every mile under 7 even when I felt like I couldn't lift my legs and refrained from walking. Hitting a quick pace (6:00-6:15 depending on elevation) felt good and cardio-wise I felt good even after a week trip back East a week and a half ago. Hopefully this translates into good long runs where I'm focused on getting my legs used to pounding while still feeling good on the run. Now for the race, we started 13 minutes late which would have altered my shedding of clothes. Once the gun went off I took off and tried to find Allie and eased back to see if I could hook up with her. But once I got in a groove I ended up in a pack with James, Will of Utah State, Adam, and the woman's winner. We had a great pack that definitely helped me stay focused and hit the right pace. The first 10 was in 1:02:30ish which put us right at 6:15 pace, but we started getting a nice tail wind and James took a little break and we had a mystery fellow join us and picked it up into the lower 6:0X's. The half was 1:21:40, and nothing of huge note happened until we started approaching the first hill at 18.5. My quads started to rebel but I managed to hold it together pretty well with some well placed water, and hit 20 in 2:03:30 which meant a negative split for the second 10 miles. I really started to hurt with the climb up to mile 22, but managed to keep everything under 7 through the finish with a nice consistent 6:55 pace. I'm very happy with this race, five minutes faster than I wanted and as long as the application goes through for Boston I got everything I wanted out of it. Andrea asked me if I had run as fast as I could have for the day, and my answer was maybe. The biggest unknown is how my legs would have responded if I had run the middle miles a little easier and not died as hard. I think the damage was done in the canyon and it was best to take the time where I could get it so the hard miles out of the canyon just buffered the inevitable slow down. Seacrest out! Strava data for those who care about splits and such: http://app.strava.com/runs/22065713
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