Eugene Marathon - RunMarathon

My run started out pretty fast, perhaps :20 per minute faster than I had planned it to be. I stuck with the 3:25 pace group for the first 1.5 miles, then dropped them and moved forward. I watched my pace and HR and was a bit concerned, but could not seem to pull back enough. I decided to evaluate my fitness at the 13.1 mile marker, and when I hit it I felt pretty strong, so I kept churning away. From my splits I expected to slow down and have the 3:25 group catch me at mile 20-23, and was a bit surprised (and disappointed) when they went by me at mile 15.

Often I tried to keep my form intact, leaning forward, not swinging my arms, and trying not to heel strike. I would fix any issues, then my mind would wander.

The run along the river is awesome. Weather was supposed to warm up a bit more than it did, and I could have used my gloves rather than leave them at the start line (I hate cold hands). My calves started to twinge a bit around mile 18, but I tried to ignore them and keep moving. I could see my pace slowing, and walked every mile for about 90 seconds, then ran to the next mile marker. At mile 23ish, I had a weird feeling of numbness in my right ankle, to where I did not have the strength to bend it much. So I focused on keeping it stable so I would not fall over and tried to keep running.

One annoying factor was there was a guy at mile 18 who went by me pretty fast, then decided to walk about 100yds in front of me. When I caught him and ran by, he decided to run again until he got 100yds past me. Again I caught him and he did the same thing. He did this about 20 times and it was making me seriously annoyed, so when I passed him I sped up with another group of runners for about a minute or two so that he could not keep up. He fell way behind and I never saw him again. I had this same thing happen later with another guy, and I would swear they saw my IM tattoo and decided to beat the Ironman. Whoopee - a lot of people beat me, so making it a race did nothing but make me angry. Oh well.

Hard to say really. I suppose perhaps run at an 8:00 per mile pace to see if my legs held out a bit longer, perhaps speeding my final time up about 5-10 minutes, but really when I tried this at other races it did not seem to have that effect, so I kind of abandoned the strategy and went back to my old ways. I had a good average time up through mile 20-21, and this is better than previous marathons (started to falter at mile 15-16), so I think I am building my way up a few miles per race). I will get to a 3:30 marathon time, and just need to chip away at it each race. I did manage to break my trend of 3:50-3:55 finish times, which has haunted me for the last few years, so I am taking away from this that my speed work is just starting to work and doing it more and more consistently will provide even more improvement.

Had the aid station wrap ice on both calves for recovery, had some water and G2, and wandered around looking for Rick and Anne-Marie. Waited for Shawn at the finish and we skipped the all-you-can-eat pancakes (just could not fathom all that starch sitting in my gut after 26.2 miles), so we met up with Rick and Anne-Marie and snapped some photos. Decided not to wait the 30 minutes for the post-race massage, and went back to Rick's place to clean up. Had all-you-can-eat chicken wings and some beer to celebrate, and watched the Coyotes win game 2 of the playoffs!


A combination of things most likely - higher HR than planned (167BPM is about 7BPM higher than expected), faster early pace than planned, cooler temps than expected, etc. Mostly aspects that are manageable, and as I do not intend on stopping running or racing, these things will be resolved.


This is an A+ race. Well organized, beautiful course, great volunteers, awesome finish and organization, and awesome spectators. A must-do return race in 2014. I would recommend the Eugene Marathon to anyone who a) loves running, b) loves the history - Prefontaine and Track Town USA, or c) loves a picturesque course.