Marathon #2 is in the books, and I escaped with a 10-minute PR!
Weather 49F start, 47F finish, wind NE 15-30. Driving rain. The night before the race it looked like the rain might actually stay to the south of us. That did not happen. The first bolt of lightning made its appearance as we were driving to the race. The first rain started about 45 minutes before the race as we were walking to the starting line. Due to lightning, the race was delayed 30 miserable minutes. I actually even saw lightning while running on the course several times, but thankfully they never called it. The rain pretty much did not let up the entire time. I didn’t mind being wet but puddles were unavoidable and my shoes were waterlogged by mile 2. The wind coming from the NE meant there would be some headwind legs on the back half of the race. It was tough wind at times, for sure, but I’ve definitely seen worse in Abilene.
My strategy going into the race was to run in the 7:30s for the first 15 or so; once again I got excited and ditched my plan early but this time it ended up being the right move. Below are the splits from Garmin, along with commentary.
Miles 1-5 7:23, 7:16, 7:19, 7:12, 7:18. I lined up pretty close to the front. I was shivering at the starting line (40 degree wind chill, pouring rain) so I knew it was going to be a good day. The 7:30 pace was the fastest sign they had – not many elites in this race (no prize $$). So I crossed the starting line maybe 10 seconds after the gun. In the early miles, I was getting angry with myself for running faster but it honestly felt easy so I didn’t actually make any adjustments unless I saw it below 7:10 which happened a few times.
Miles 6-10 7:15, 7:24, 7:19, 7:38, 7:35. Kind of a wide variety of splits but it has to do a lot more with wind and hills; the effort was pretty even. 6, 7 and 8 were through neighborhoods and a lot of the headwind was blocked. I was breathing really hard after 9 and 10 and thought I might have blown my race already but then reminded myself those were uphill + headwind miles (out in the open and fully exposed to wind).
Miles 11-15 7:26, 7:19, 7:21, 7:24, 7:19. Mile 11 was the last headwind mile (only half of it) until 17. During this stretch I really caught my breath after fighting wind and hills. I got super relaxed and started to realize that it would be a pretty good race. This stretch was also nice and flat, which is what I’m used to. High spirits here.
Miles 16-20 7:23, 7:29, 7:24, 7:21, 7:13. Miles 17-19 had a quartering headwind and a driving rain which was quite annoying hitting my face. I plodded on pretty well though. Mile 20 is where I started to lose it in Houston. Today, it was downhill and starting to turn downwind; I actually saw 6:50-something on the watch about halfway through it before I came back to reality. Having my second-fastest mile come at #20 was the confidence boost I needed for that last 10K.
Miles 21-26 7:21, 7:36, 7:30, 7:43, 7:25, 7:52, 3:12 (0.43 miles). Starting at mile 21.5 or so, the course starts climbing – nothing dramatic, just a 100 foot climb or so over 2.5 miles; it’s a good steady uphill. The other thing that happened at around 21.5 was the course joined with the half-marathoners. That was kind of weird. I hadn’t thought about it a great deal beforehand but the people-dodging got to be a little much. Definitely ran some bonus mileage here. I could not even really see any marathoners, it seemed like it was just me and the walkers for a few miles. The good news is there was a tailwind, and my times didn’t suffer too bad although I could tell my legs weren’t quite working the same as before. Around mile 24, there was a lot more separation between the two races and I saw more marathoners that I could focus on. I could finally feel myself starting to hit the wall around mile 25 but thankfully the race was just about over. I fought through mile 26 and was determined to bring it below 8:00, legs or no legs, and I did! The last half-mile or so was at 7:26 pace (downhill); it felt like a dead sprint. Final time was about 3:15:51. The results page is down, so nothing official yet. I’ll update with placing and official splits later. Danielle said 67th out of 2,494. Let's go with that. The two halves ended up being something like 1:36, 1:39.
Post race After my race ended the conditions actually got worse somehow. It actually started hailing for a period. Poor Danielle. She made it though, she is now a marathoner. I am not kidding when I say that the most difficult part of the day was waiting in my drenched clothes and shorts for Danielle and then walking almost a mile to the car in some ridiculous wind (gusts around 40 mph) and rain. We were both shaking pretty violently from the cold. Seriously, that was more painful than the 26th mile.
Battle damage is all on my lower right leg - some tendon on the back side of my knee that connects to the top of the calf is the worst. I also have a tender achilles and maybe a calf strain and some other weird stuff. Nothing that will keep me out for more than a week, I don’t think.
Next up is a hot summer of base building. I hope to work my way up to 70 miles a week by September or so. I don’t think I’ll run another marathon until Houston in January but it’s too early to say for sure. I hope to be ready for a 3:05 and a BQ at Houston since that is the new time standard (not that I’ll actually get into the race with it). Thanks for the support FRB’ers, it was a great day!
** update - officially 67/2495 overall, 62/1515 males, and 16/232 in AG. HM split was 1:36:21 so the 2nd half was 1:39:30. | 
