I was feeling good and stayed running up until mile 18. Up to that point my avg. pace was about 7:50/mi. I was on target for about a 3:30 marathon, but I knew that was very optimistic. I assumed I'd hit the wall at some point. After I started walking, I avg'd between 11 and 10 min miles. Found a "second wind" after about mile 23 to drag myself into the finish. Beat everyone else in my group. The others really struggled with this event and missed their goals by 40+ minutes, so I am very happy I only missed my goal by 5 min! :)

Drink more, and spread my eating out more and start it earlier. I think maybe part of my problem was that I didn't start soon enough and I had too much all at once. My body may have been working hard to process too much of the food I consumed (it was mashed potatoes, by the way :)).

Stretch, collapse, and enjoy NOT RUNNING :) Man it feels good to sit down after a marathon.


26.2 miles of distance to run :) Actually, I think it had something to do with what I mentioned above. My legs were done after mile 18- not sure what to do to keep lactic acid from building up in them, but they hurt to run on.


There seemed to be alot of dehydrated people despite all of the aid stations. My theory is that the cups were too small- they should have used larger cups - I had a tendency to only take one and you needed about 2-3 to stay properly hydrated. I started taking multiple cups toward the end and managed to keep my hydration in better check than others, but I suspect many were only taking one cup. The race was great other than that observation.