Each Day Is a Gift

Way to cross train laying pavers. I bet it turned out great.

Be careful, it's only 35 days till the Full Monte!

Sat, Sep 06, 2014

Race: The Mt. Nebo Marathon (26.2 Miles) 03:48:02, Place overall: 25, Place in age division: 1

Total Distance

26.20

September 6, 2014

The Nebo Marathon

Oh boy, what a day, what a beautiful marathon, and what a success it was for me as a runner. I started the day hoping to run a 3:30:xx marathon.

As I got out of bed Saturday morning, 15 minutes before the alarm went off, I felt like I had put together a pretty good training cycle to conquer the Nebo. I jumped out of bed and into my pre-prepared routine and quickly found myself at the parking area of the Payson High School, the staging area for the bus ride to the top of Payson canyon for the big run down the canyon. I don't recall seeing any "Green Temples of Doom" in the bus loading zone.

From all appearances, the race director seemed to have his race well under control. It may not have been up to the standard of a Boston or St. George marathon but pretty good none the less. The bus loading for the full mary and the half mary seemed to go off well with the race director boarding our bus telling us that there would be plenty of "Port-O-Potties" at the marathon staging and starting area. Three Port-O-Potties for 110 runners. Needless to say but the promised 6:30 am start was put off at least 10 minutes, to which a large number of marathoners were still in the Pottie line and unable to start with the main group. To the best of my knowledge, the race had registered about 110 full marathoners and about 850 half marathoners.

Just as the race was about to start, first light was breaking over the valleys below and it was a grand sight of the awesome beauty of the mountains here in Utah. Bang, Bang, Boom, Boom the race was off and running. I as usual made my way to as close to the starting line as possible and was immediately passed by the really fast runners and pretty much left me to run the race in my very own private running bubble. Seemed like about 22 or 23 runners got out ahead of me at this point and only one guy that looked like he was in my age group. I was running at a pace that left me behind the leaders and ahead of the main body of runners, running pretty much by myself. It was a beautiful run down the canyon in the tall pines, Quakies and fairly lush green underbrush. It wasn't a totally lonely run as the roads were open to traffic and the family and friends of some of the runners would leap frog the course cheering on all the runners including their runners.

The race course is billed as a predominately down hill dash to the finish starting at the 9200 foot elevation level.and ending at the 4800 ft. level. This race course like St. George has a net loss of elevation while your running up seven hills in the first 10 miles of the race and these hill are not to be taken lightly, they are brutal on your oxygen intake at that elevation. I found my breathing pretty labored in those first 10 miles. So at this point, about 10 miles, the course takes a very decidedly steep down grade to about the 19 mile mark while running rather narrow twisting, turning two lane black top road to the finish line on the rubberized track at the Payson High School. I might add that running on the track was the best part of running this race. The down hill grade was brutal on the legs.I'm certainly happy that almost every training run that I do is in the hills so I felt well prepared for the brutal down hill portions of this race.

At about mile 19 the course winds out of the shade covered canyon road and into the direct sunlight where the ambient temperature jumped up to about 77 degrees and the somewhat flatter running surface. It seems to me that at about this point in my race it all started to become much harder to keep up my earlier pace on the neighborhood roads and I started to give up some precious minutes to fatigue. Personally, I was running out of gas and it became a struggle to keep up my desired pace. I was really glad to see the end of this marathon.

My unofficial time via my Garmin was 3:48:08, about 18 minutes slower than I had expected....oh well, I finished with the shinny side up and feeling good about my performance. At the finish line the super volunteers met you with your finisher medal and an ice cold bottle of water. Further into the finish they had all the recovery drinks and foods and such. Pretty well organized finish area. Shortly there after the awards ceremony started and I was hoping that I might place in my age division. In this marathon my division was defined as 60+..... and I was not disappointed. I took 1st place in my age division. It was a great two medal marathon and these medals are huge and heavy. One for finishing and one for finishing first in my old man age division......Yea! The best that I can tell, I finished about 25th overall, but this is unofficial until Nebo publishes their/our results.

Would I run this marathon again? Ya, I'll do it again someday.

This news just in;

1.Official Mt Nebo Full Marathon finish time 3:48:02

2. #14 in overall male race finish

3. #1 in 60-99 Age Division

4. 25th in overall race

I think of a Hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.--Bob Dylan