I spent a lot of time trying to decide how fast I would run this. I would certainly go faster than 3:10, in order to get to Boston. My 15K speed would predict a 3:00 marathon, so I thought about going for that. But, since I didn't get very many long runs in I decided to compromise and go for 3:05. That would give me a buffer for Boston, and if I felt awesome I could try to negative split the second half.

My eating and drinking strategy was simple: alternate water and gatorade at the aid stations, and down a GU every 4 miles through mile 20. This would give me more Calories than I actually need, but I knew my stomach could handle it so why not. I carried 4 GUs in my hands, planning to pick up a Power Gel from an aid station. That plan worked just fine. In fact I stupidly gave away one of my GUs to someone who looked really bad. I was like "do you need this?" and he took it and went "sure, I got some of my own, but I'll take yours too." So I had to make adjustments after that. Anyway, I never got any cramps from drinking too much, and I never hit the wall, so it was a good nutrition strategy.

I normally go out fast, but I wanted to be conservative at first, so I put myself in a pack at the beginning and just kind of took it easy for a few miles. I spotted a triathlete in the pack, and of course I had to beat him, so I was content to follow him in the pack for a while to size him up. After the 5K mark I saw that my pace was reasonable and I hadn't started too fast, so I decided to run off the front of the pack. After about another mile, the triathlete surged to catch up with me, and we had a little bit of a competition in which he would surge ahead to drop me and then I would slowly reel him in. This was repeated a few times until we reached a hill at mile 5. His breathing was labored, so I pushed a little bit on the hill to try to break him. It's cruel, I know, but it's okay because he decided not to bite and instead let me run away. I dropped lots of people on that hill and spent the next 5 miles running alone.

At mile 9 or 10 some guy passed me, though he didn't get far ahead of me. I decided to pace off of him, because he was doing about the same pace as me. Actually he was faster on the flats, but whenever a little hill came I could catch up to him and even pass him briefly, so we had this yo-yo thing going on. Another guy caught up to me and decided to run DIRECTLY behind me. So, the three of us ran in a row for the next 8 or 9 miles. Actually in mile 12 the lead guy started pushing the pace and it became faster than what I was comfortable with. I mean, I could keep up, but it was so fast that I was starting to get worried about what would happen in the later miles. The guy behind me felt the same way. We went through the half marathon mark in 1:30:41, just a little slower than 3-hour pace and 2 minutes faster than I had planned. I kept about 5 yards between myself and the lead guy, so he almost sneaked away a few times.

Finally in the 17th mile the pace lightened up. The guy behind me said he was hanging on for dear life, and I agreed. It turns out that the lead guy just ate a Power Gel and it wasn't agreeing with him so he slowed a bit. In the 18th mile I was feeling pretty good, and the pace was actually a little slower than I liked (we did have a good rhythm before). So I moved to the front and decided to set the pace. It was very fun up there, but it turns out that my pace was a bit too fast for the others. I dropped them both, and I felt kinda bad about that. My pace was somewhere between 3:00 and 3:05, which was great. I was also picking off some people who had gone out too fast and were now doing very badly.

Then after 19 miles my right quad suddenly became very sore, like I strained it or something. Of course I kept running, so it became much worse. Before long the left quad started to die too. Actually it probably took a mile for them both to reach an excruciatingly painful level. It felt kind of like very bad shin splints in my quads. Needless to say, my pace slowed. The guy that previously set the pace passed me again, so I didn't need to feel guilty about him anymore (and the other guy finished in 3:08, so I don't have to feel bad about him either). I decided to try to pace off of this guy again. We went off the road at mile 20ish and entered a bike path. There was a gentle downhill when entering the path, and I thought I was going to die when I went down it because my quads hurt so much. The remaining time on the bike path I was just running from the gut, thinking only about how I had to qualify for Boston. I was still on pace to go under 3:05 at that point, so I just needed to avoid a complete meltdown.

The last 2 miles were back on the road, and here the guy ahead of me dropped me like a rock. Fortunately people weren't catching and passing me. In fact, I passed 2 more people before the end. These last miles were basically a countdown, and I finally became confident that nothing could go wrong after hitting the 40K mark. I cruised the rest of the way, finishing just a bit slower than 3:05 and qualifying for Boston for both 2009 and 2010.

Here are some splits:

5K - 20:45, 6:41/mile
10K - 42:30, 6:50/mile
15K - 1:04:27, 6:56/mile
20K - 1:25:56, 6:55/mile
25K - 1:47:13, 6:54/mile
30K - 2:09:33, 6:57/mile
35K - ??
40K - 2:55:27, 7:04/mile

And here are some laps:

Miles 1,2 - 13:31 (6:45/mile)
Miles 3,4,5 - 20:40 (6:53/mile)
Miles 6,7 - 13:55 (6:58/mile)
Miles 8,9 - 14:16 (7:08/mile)
Mile 10 - 6:52
Mile 11 - 7:04
Mile 12 - 6:46 <--start of fast section
Mile 13 - 6:56
Mile 14 - 6:54
Miles 15,16 - 13:53 (6:56/mile) <--end of fast section
Mile 17 - 7:06
Mile 18 - 7:10 <--start of pacemaking duties
Mile 19 - 7:08
Mile 20 - 7:17 <--start of quad pain
Mile 21 - 7:16
Mile 22 - 7:16
Mile 23 - 7:24 <--survival mode begins
Mile 24 - 7:29
Mile 25 - 7:36
Mile 26 - 7:30


Nothing. My quads wore out because I didn't do enough long runs in training.

3rd place in my age group was just 2 minutes ahead of me, so I guess if my quads would have been okay I would have had a shot at beating him. That's the only negative of this race.

I tried to catch up to the guy ahead of me to talk to him, but he was still too quick.

I got some gatorade and went to stretch, but I couldn't sit down. My quads could support absolutely no weight, so I had to fall on the ground. Eventually I ate a good meal of pizza, soup, bananas, etc. and got a massage.


Quads died, slowing my pace from the low 7:00s to about 7:30 over the course of the last 10K.


Great scenic race. Well-organized, inexpensive, and full of amenities. It's point-to-point, a fast Boston qualifier, and has plenty of mile/kilometer markers and aid stations