Ok, so my plan leading into this marathon was to exhaust my legs to prepare for JFK50. I didn't want to taper at all. Thankfully I was able to really tire my legs with lots of hills in Hawaii last week. I think I accomplished trashing my legs because at mile 6 I was questioning my pace and I was probably holding a low 10. I wanted to hold a mid 10 for the entire race as I wanted to be able to recover very quickly to continue my training for JFK.

I think I ran this marathon pretty smart. I went a little faster than I had wanted but my legs were REALLY tired and I was able to push through which is what I'm looking to do for the 50 miler. Also, the second half of the run was significantly faster than the first. I passed a lot of people in the last half of the marathon especially in the last 4.5 miles. This gives me SOME confidence moving towards the 50 miler.

I wouldn't have done much differently here. I tried REALLY hard not to put too much of an effort out here and it's especially hard when half marathons are cruising by you in the first half and marathons looking to BQ cruising as well. I kept telling myself "follow your plan, Carrie. This isn't your race." ha ha

I would have brought a few more gels with me. That's one thing I would have done differently. They had NOTHING on the course.

Walked around a bit, ate some food and waited for Chrissy to finish. I didn't go out for more miles because when I saw Chrissy on the course I thought she'd be finished way earlier than she was. She started having some issues after I saw her, though.


Again, I performed as expected today. My legs were tired and I sucked it up. That was the plan :-)


I was a little disappointed with a few things about this race. First, they said they would have gels on the course - they did not. Also, there were only 2 bathrooms on the course. I really thought they should have had maybe one or two more especially in the first half. Oh, and I specifically asked the gear check people if our bags would be watched the entire time because they were being left kind of in an open area. She assured me they would be; HOWEVER, when my sister and I went to pick up our bags they were sitting on a table with a bunch of others - just sitting there - unattended. There was some guy putting chairs away and we asked him if he was the gear check security and he looked at us with this dumb look on his face. Now, I didn't have anything valuable in there (that would be silly); however, I think my stuff in general is valuable to me. We just took our bags and told the chair guy that we were taking our bags. He, of course, did not care.

The post race food was good. If you enjoy your medals, I thought they were pretty cool (I'm not a big medal fan). Parking was easy.

If the race director can tone down the wind next year - that would be fabulous!