felt just great.. felt strong but had this nagging mental bug in my head that I was pushing too hard.. but the legs and the whole timing of it seemed just fine to me.. in fact.. even to the end.. the race seemed like it went by extraordinarly short.. go figure.. with a 14 hr Ironman who would have thought that.. DOH. too bad my legs didn't think so at mile 18.. which is when the extraordinary angle pain and general waddling began.. I ran until mile 17.3 w/o stopping at all.. kept the pace and felt great.. after I stopped at 17.3 .. it didn't feel right anymore.. the next mile was 10 minutes and lots ah dinky hills.. I felt the cringe.. and waddled away.. stopped at the drink stations now.. and took powerad.. before that I was just swipping them and gulping down and never stopping..

at mile 21 the most significant hillage (which isn't really that bad) hit me.. and I walked a fair amount of it.. so a 11:30 hit my report card.. as did a 12 after that mile.. was feeling pathetic.. I'm an Ironman.. its only been 3.5 hours.. i even wore my hat in pride .. a few cheering people said way to go ironman.. you know what its all about.. I swallowed it and took that kick in the ass and rode on.. with a 10 the next mile.. then another hill hit me.. ugggggh.. walked a bit more with a 11:30.. then I saw the last hill.. and the cathedral showed up.. round the corner and this enormous giant flag above to fire truck laddars was perched up about 80 feet in the air.. the nice hill got my going again.. and I finished with a sub 9 the last mile.. wooohoooo i made it.. 14 minutes shy of my goals.. but 18 lower then my PR.. so am happy and a little let down at the same time... I will get sub 4 next time for sure!!!

give myself a few more LSD runs at pace ..
back up the Ironman a few more weeks.. maybe whistletop would have been better for me... 3 weeks isn't much time to recover and I only did a 10 and 9 miler for prep..

very anti-climatic at the end.. no music.. just a line of limping cattle to the consessions... I limped to my sweat bag and then changed.. got a ride to my truck in Mnpls from a couple of good friends... so that was cool..


ironman , no big runs since august and even then the longest was 18 at a much slower pace with breaks...


Excellent race... they aren't kidding with the 'beautiful downtown' but even moreso.. the amount of cheering, music and general entertaining along this route was amazing... never seen it that festive.. especially given the fact that is rained ..not just rained.. but POURED cats and dogs for most of the race.. awsome !!