Well, now that I've had a day to think it all through I'll give a little report here of marathon #3.
My first marathon was SGM '08.....record cold. Last year's #2 SGM was about perfect weather. And this one was record heat. Three marathons in three years and three completely different experiences.
One thing that made this marathon really fun was having our own condo to stay in and having our good friends, the Beans, stay with us! We had a great time here!
Tom, Terry and I left the condo around 4:30 and was able to get right on a bus and head up to the start. We could tell it was going to turn out to be quite a warm morning for a long run. Funny thing is they were handing out the silver space blankets to everyone at the start. People still wrapped in them and there were still fires so it looked like a bunch of tinfoil dinners all over the place. Kind of weird.
We lined up just behind the 4:00 pacer. My goals for this marathon were
- Run as far as possible without feeling ITB pain.
- Hydrate enough to keep me out of the ER.
- Run the first half more conserviative so that maybe my knees would feel better longer.
- Get a PR (under 4:05)
- Get a sub 4:00.
I am happy to say that I reached each and every one of my goals! Unfortunately I had some pretty bad GI issues that caused FOUR awful stops! Grrrrr! But even with that I was able to reach all of my goals. Maybe without the potty stops I would have reached my unofficial goal of BQ at 3:50. The reason that was an unofficial goal was because if I tried to make it one of the goals I think it could have hindered me on some of the other goals.
1.9:02
2.9:03
3. 9:00
4.9:47 (2 potty stops!)
5.8:43
6.8:39
7.8:28
8.9:55
9.9:40
10.9:29
11.9:43
12.9:33
13.9:16
14.9:55 (potty stop)
15.8:34 (now I've gone further than last marathon without any ITB issues!)
16.8:39
17.8:26 (I think it was around here that we passed a guy and he said, "Hey Kim and Tom". We looked behind and lo and behold it was our good buddy Paul T.....not feeling well at all...so sad for me to be passing him. I just read his report, so sorry for a bad day for Paul...but grateful he didn't end up in the hospital.
18.8:54 (here I've gone further than either of my previous marathons without ITB issues!)
19.8:56 (on this hill I told Tom to find some stories from his youth that he had never told me to help keep me occupied. He proceeded to tell me more of his Campin' Coyotes tales...this one involved 12 year old boys, exploding soda pop cans in bon fires, tents and sleeping bags catching fire and trying to come up with a good story to tell their moms about the whole thing.
20.9:24 (last potty stop.)
21.8:08
22.9:11
23.9:08
24.8:21
25.8:54
26.8:43
.2 2:28 (7:48 pace)
At the end....off to find a POP again....Yesterday I was convinced I had picked up Giardia from last week's Dirty Dash! Awful evening....TMI, I know,....But this morning I think I am feeling much better. I don't know if it was because I had taken Advil and the heat and the marathon or what. Whatever it was I sure don't want to ever run with that kind of misery again!
I feel like I did my best for the conditions I faced yesterday. I am not feeling very sore today so I'm not sure what that means...maybe I could have gone harder, but then I may have had ITB issues. So I am very happy with my effort and my results.
It has been a fun training year with Tom! It was great to have him with me...we really enjoyed the whole thing.
One thing we had this time that I haven't had before was our 2 youngest daughters cheering us on at the finish line with Terry's wife, Taunia. It was so nice to see them there! It was Tia's 10th birthday so we yelled a Happy Birthday to her...Tom ran over to say a quick hi as I focused on those balloons at the end. We crossed the finish line together and celebrated our victory!
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