We woke up today at 6 am and it was already 66 degrees outside and new that it was going to get warm. By race time at 7:30 it was probably 70 and still getting warmer. By the end of the race it was 77. I sure hope it is much cooler next week in Boston. I was a 1:30 pacer for the race which should be right at marathon pace for me. We got started and I had about 10 people in my pace group. The wind was blowing pretty strong and I mentioned to those in our group that we should bank some time going out because the flags were whipping (I'm guess close to 20 miles per hour.) and we were going to have to run back into the wind for the last 4 1/2 miles. Those in the group wanted me to keep it at a steady 6:52 so I said OK. By the time we hit the turn around (we had only banked 10 seconds) spot I had dropped everyone but one runner. When we turned around we were hit with a serious wall of wind. I told the one guy with me to get behind me and I would block the wind for as long as I could go. I was able to hold onto the pace for about 1 mile and a half, but it was just too strong and I had to back off. I told him I couldn't hold it any more and he kindly went ahead and let me draft off him for a couple miles until he started fading a bit and then I went back ahead, but he couldn't go with me. He ended up finishing a bit more than a minute behind me. I crossed the finish line in 1:30:53 feeling like I had worked way to hard to run that pace, but really I just worked way to hard running into the wind at the end of the race. My splits were: 1 6:48 2 6:47 3 6:53 4 6:56 5 6:48 6 6:51 7 6:48 8 6:57 9 6:51 10 7:07 11 7:15 12 7:25 13 7:03 13.1 6:56 pace I ended up getting 7th overall and 3 place in my AG and received a nice little plaque. | 