Mt. Lemon Marathon
It was a tough lead up to the race having nursed an injured right calf from about 5 weeks out. I was able to semi train the last five weeks with a lot of supplemental elliptical work and about 10 days out it finally felt 100% so I was at least feeling healthy, although a little undertrained heading to Tucson on Friday. My son, Chase went with me. We showed up around 3:00 at the race expo and did that stuff and then checked into our hotel and sat around for a couple hours watching football. Then we headed out to dinner when I noticed my left calf, not the one that had been injured, hurt when I walked. By the time we got to dinner, I could hardly walk on it. There was a knott in the upper medial muscle that was so tender it really hurt to touch it. After dinner we went back to the hotel and I tried everything to loosen it up and nothing worked, so I went to bed. It kept me up durring the night, as every time my other leg touched it the pain woke me up. When I got up in the morning it still hurt to walk so I went outside and tested it out running and hopping and surprisingly enough, it didn't hurt to run or hop on it, only to touch it or walk, so I decided to give it a go. I was very nervous that I was not going to be able to finish the race though.
They bussed us up to the starting line in nice busses, good thing because it was over an hour on the bus. When we got up there I was surprised to see there was a lodge up there that they allowed us to wait in. That was nice. Some of the busses were late getting up to the start so they delayed the race about 15 minutes, but let us hang out inside until right before the race. It was cold up there, just above freezing.
Not being sure about my calf I decided to just run the race by feel and everynow and then it would remind me to slow down a bit. Luckly the first 4 miles are the toughest, especially at 8000 feet so I had some time to warm up my calf and just ran what felt comfortable. Here are my splits, remember I ran the whole thing by feel so my splits are all over the place.
1- 8:14 startig with a steep climb
2- 6:32
3- 8:50 almost 300 foot climb
4- 8:35 150 foot climb up to 8200 feet
5- 6:37
6- 6:26
7- 6:13 my fastest mile, must have been really steep downhill
8- 6:31
9- 6:26
10- 6:29
11- 6:46 there was a nice little climb at the beginning of this mile
12- 6:30
13- 6:17, my quads were screaming at my by the half
14- 6:37
15- 6:22
16- 6:57 anthor small climb
17- 6:57
18- 7:04 lack of traing catching up with me
19- 6:48
20- 7:01 starting the mental games
21- 6:52
22- 6:43
23- 6:41not sure how I'm still running fast
24- 7:13
25- 7:10 wheels are coming off
26- 9:28 hit the wall hard, walked for the first 2 minutes of the mile
26.2- finished last .2 running well.
Avg pace miles 1-4: 8:03
Avg pace miles 5-25: 6:42
Avg pace entire race: 7:13
Total time 3:09:15 for what I thought was a 15+ minute BQ, but did anyone else notice that on the Boston web page, starting in 2020 all times are 5 minutes faster so now I need 3:20 for my age.
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