Not my finest hour to date, but still fairly respectable. I knew going in that my training was not particularly great, but I was shooting for around 1:50 anyway. It was a windy day (between 20 and 25 mph, with stronger gusts), but it was warm AND overcast. I could have done without the wind, but really, I couldn't have asked for better weather. I ran with my brother Greg, my running buddy, Jason, from the past two years, and two friends of his from school, Brock and Adam. We all stayed together till about mile 8, when Jason was falling behind. We tried to keep him with us, but he told us at the end that he had already decided to just run his own pace. Greg and I stayed with Brock and Adam about one more mile, but they started to get faster and we started to slow a little. I felt great till mile 8, good till mile 10, mentally struggled through mile 12, and then I just tried to push into the finish. At mile 11ish I finally told my bro that I was struggling and needed encouragement, and he didn't quite get it at first. Instead he just said, "I encourage you." He did get it after a bit, but he kept saying, "Come on, let's pick up the pace." I kept telling him to just go, thinking that maybe if he accelerated, I could follow on his heels. But he (rightfully so) thought that I would just slow down. I'm not sure which I would have done, follow or slow, but he said afterward that he didn't think he could accelerate. But we finished strong.
Splits were 8:28, 8:22, 8:15, 8:18, 8:30 (but this was when I noticed that my watch was measuring long, so I hit the lap button when I passed the mile marker to keep my splits even. Miles 3 and 4 were a little slower than my watch says), 8:21, 8:29, 8:31, 8:23, 8:36, 8:34, 8:41, 8:21, and then 6:52 pace at the end. My splits show exactly what I was feeling. Lots of bright sides: I felt relaxed and enjoyed running with my bro, had some good conversation with Jason in the first several miles, didn't stop to walk through a single water station, kept pace with my bro at the end, and this is the first long race I've done where my second toes' nails did not get bruised. Yay! I do, though, have a lot more blisters than usual.
On another great note, my running buddy Jason beat cancer this year, and ended his race feeling good with a time of 1:54:43. I'm proud of him. Last year when he was sick but didn't yet know it was cancer, he ran a 1:57:42. I'm thinking about writing a letter to the paper. There's a good running story for them. The only thing that is holding me back is that I think he'd be pretty embarrassed. But man, what a kid!
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