A course designed to give runners delusions of granduer. The start was weird, since no one could hear the announcer. The front people at the start, just started moving, so we just figured that the race had started. Since it was a small race, the crowd pretty well thinned out in the first half mile. Mile two, I looked at my split, and it was a low 8, so I needed to slow down. From mile two to about mile 20, I was maintaining a good 8:45 pace, walking through the waterstations every other mile. I was in a good zone, with some of the mile markers coming very quickly.

The wind helped. At one point, I was actually putting on the breaks as the wind was pushing me uphill.

At mile 13, I realized that I had just set a PR for my half marathon, by over a minute.

The legs started twitching at about mile 15, which is normally what happens in training runs, but I got over it. At mile 20, my legs went numb, which was a really strange feeling. They had recovered by about mile 22.

Then in mile 24, I lost it. I think that the problem was that I knew that I had my sub-4. My splits, which were already going up, shot up to 9:45s, and I did 2-3 walks. Just didn't have anything at the end to kick it up.

I got what I was training for, so next time, start training for a faster pace.

Water, walking. I couldn't even bend over for 10 minutes. Did some stretching, grabbed a soup, and then drove home for a late breakfast of pancakes and strawberries


Lots of fun. Nice course, nice organization