Colorado Colfax Marathon - RunMarathon

Let's see what I can remember. My big goal was to break 3 hours. My realistic goal was 3:03. Fall apart goal was 3:20:59, enough for a BQ. Started right up front and carried my gel flask and gatorade bottle. Went out with the leaders at a good clip but not too fast. First mile was around 6:40. Then the bike escort for the leaders took the group the wrong way on the course. Great, heard the guys up front yelling and cussing and back they came. It was chaos. People running through the park grass to get back on course and poeople yelling it was about .2 of a mile long for me. I will add my splits later as I forgot my Garmin at home today. Kept calm and knew it would be a long day. Had my splits I wanted to hit on my hand for certain mile markers. My Garmin beeped .2 miles before every mile marker. Chuggin along staying within myself I ran steady the first 4 miles because I knew I had a hill coming up and wanted to bank some time. Hit mile 5 and was about 1:30 off my pace. Hit the porta potty here. Caught back up to my group I was running with. There was a few guys I ran with most of the way. Chit chatted with afew guys. Dime and my wife rode with me for a while and I handed off my gel flask because they had gels at the aid stations. Dime flatted at mile 4 and had to stop and fix it. Stayed calm and drank my gatorade through mile 12. Then I was ready to go downhill. I was right on 7 minute mile pace. Got to 13 miles at 1:32:20. 2:20 off my pace goal. I knew that .2 miles extra would catch up. I pushed on the downhill to make up time. Gelled at mile 8,16 and 23. Everything was going as planned. Kept passing people and played tag with the eventual 2nd place guy in my agegroup most of the race. He was ahead by about 20 seconds almost the whole race. I just kept him in sight. Continued to pick people of as I headed to sloans lake. Felt good. this was mile 17. High fived Velocomp at the relay exchange and said hi and good luck! Dime had caught up to me by this time. We talked and I kept pushing. Got to mile 20 and felt good. Going up 17th st I caught 2 more guys fading fast. Got to the hill at Broadway and just charged it. Not a long hill but pretty steep. GOt onto 17th ave and jsut kept the pace strong. Got to mile 23 and I knew I would BQ but not hit my 3 hour mark. Passed a few more guys here. Got into the park and started picking it up. I saw 3 guys ahead of me and I got them all. Bummer for them. Pushed it as well as I could with 1 mile left and saw the finish. I was so happy to be finished. I really felt pretty good at the end. One big blister on my 2nd toe, but other wise I loved the injinji socks. Wow, what a day. I drank some beers with my wife, Dime and Steve Krebs. Krebs is a hood to coast teammate and one fast dude. SO my wife goes to check the results and comes back and says, you were 3rd in your agegroup and 8th overall. I was like noway? Turns out they paid the top 3 masters money! I won $200 dollars. So I was very happy with the day. We waited for ever for awards then they forgot to give awards for our agegroup, wwe yelled at the annoouncer and he finally did ours. He said he already did our agegruoop. We were all 3 standing there saying, no you didn't. He was an ass! Oh well, get day and great company. Lots of cool bands along the way too!

Nothing.

Beers and walking.


Lack of Marathon experience.


Great race, again poor management on the organizers part.
BQ! Baby!