I ran the Pocatello Marathon today. My brother Adam and I drove up on Friday and stayed at a hotel in "downtown." It was fine. In the morning we got up and boarded the bus with no problems. I joined the 3:35 pace group because that was about what I thought I could run if everything went well. More realistically, I was shooting for 3:45. This was because my training has been very limited lately. I have been running 5-15 miles per week lately. But I wanted to run with my brother, so I decided to give it my best shot.
It was really nice to run with a group. I stuck with them (for the most part) until about mile 19 or 20. Then I hit the wall. I was hoping this wouldn't happen because I did a good job of keeping my blood sugar up, and I felt pretty good up to that point. But my legs just couldn't take the beating of running that long. My knees, ankles, and feet started to hurt, and I'm sure it was just because of the downhill pounding in particular.
Then at mile 21, there was a fairly good sized hill, and that hammered me. At one point, my right knee started hurting quite a bit, so I stopped to walk. But then it felt better soon, so I kept going (slowly). By this point it was somewhat of a death march, but I made it through (walking a couple other times for a minute or two). Toward the end I was calculating to see if I could still break 4 hours. It turns out that I did (3:46). I'll take that. But I can tell you that it's much more fun to run a marathon when you've prepared for it than when you haven't!
And at least I know I can still run faster than Paul Ryan. :)
My (22-year-old) brother ran a strong race and finished in 6th and broke the 3 hour barrier!
| 