Miles 1-3 were crowded, with a lot of weaving in and out of people to pass them. I thought I was pretty reasonably placed at the start, by the 4:15 pace group sign, but the halfers seemed to be all over the place with their random walking and texting(!). Running the tangents was almost impossible with that many people, and by mile 2 my Garmin distance was off by about .15 miles, so I knew I had done a particularly bad job at it.

Once the half marathoners broke away around mile 5, things got nice. Less talking, more business. The out and back portion into South Windsor is the best part of the course, fairly flat and with plenty of spectators. This part was a breeze. I chose to run with a 20oz Nathan bottle, and this plan worked out pretty well because water stations annoy me. It was pretty easy to take the top off and refill my bottle every third stop or so.

Once we got back into East Hartford at around mile 18, the tone of the race started to change. A group of runners came up behind me, possibly the 4:30 pace group. One member of the group (the pacer?) was talking about how this was his 20th marathon, and he was warning the other members about the wall they were going to hit at mile 21, going into great detail about all the ways they were going to fall apart. Another guy was like "yeah my hamstring is already starting to tighten up". What the hell? Can't we just enjoy what's going on around us rather than focusing on the doom that's coming in three miles? Finally I couldn't take it anymore, and I told them they were being mighty discouraging. Which was way nicer than what I was thinking. They shut up, and as we passed the water stop they must have started walking, because I never heard those self-destructive whiny beetches again.

Everything was pretty peachy up until about mile 23ish, after we had gone through Hartford and then headed back out towards the hinterlands. This part of the course was pretty torturous, all highway overpasses and road noise. Very cruel. At this point, the course also started to roll a bit. For some reason, I did fine on the hills, mostly because running the downhills and flat portions was really starting to hurt, but also because there were lots of people to pass on the hills. I'm the most competitive slow runner ever.

Miles 24-25 were rough. I have no idea where we were, but it felt like hell. Even worse than normal Hartford. Stopping to walk wasn't an option, because I didn't train with walking and knew if I tried now, things would completely lock up. But because there were no spectators at this point, I was able to go into my little runner zone and just keep moving.

Finally we started heading back into Hartford proper. I could smell the post race food and began to enjoy the spectators that had been missing over the past few miles. I saw that the sub-4:30 was possible, so I booked it to the finish line. Yes! I'm hooked on marathons for sure.

Here's me splits from the Garmin. You can see I wasn't enjoying miles 23-25 very much.
Note that Garmin had my distance at 26.57, with a pace of 10:09
1 9:54 169
2 9:54 175
3 10:11 177
4 10:00 177
5 10:02 176
6 10:17 174
7 10:02 171
8 9:56 171
9 10:01 169
10 10:02 168
11 10:10 167
12 10:02 165
13 10:09 167
14 10:02 168
15 10:04 169
16 10:04 168
17 10:15 166
18 10:01 166
19 10:09 165
20 10:28 165
21 10:07 167
22 10:17 167
23 10:26 165
24 10:48 162
25 10:36 164
26 10:16 165

57 9:23 169

Nothing this time around, but I am definitely changing my training up for my next marathon (starting with more run mileage and more than two 20 milers). Overall, I'm really happy with my pacing, because my first half and second half splits were within 3 minutes of one another. My goal was to run a smart race, and not end up hating the marathon. Success!

The pain was incredible! Found Steve and the in-laws, and then I laid down on the ground and put my feet up until finally, I was able to hobble over to the food tent and get some apple-y junk. On the way home we went to the diner so I could have some eggs and french fries.


Ummm.... yeah. That would definitely be getting into a car accident last November and not being able to train very much in the off season.


good shirts, humongous finisher medals, ok course (for hartford), good organization. Needs more port-o-potties, and it would be super if they could start the half separate from the full or make some corrals.