This is a HUGE race with over 20,000 people and sometimes a major mob scene. I started feeling very nervous and anxious about my new shoes, my lack of Garmin to help pace me and within the first couple of miles lost both my chapstick and one of my gu's. I only had four total gu's as I was counting on getting some on the run. Then I started remembering that there wouldn't be any available until around mile 18 or 19. This sent me into another worry and I ended up finding an unopened gu that someone had dropped, picked it up and put it in my back pocket in case I really needed one.

I was supposed to start in wave D, but ended up starting at the very back of wave C so I could run the first few miles with one of my training partners who was running the half. She wanted me to pace her, however, the whole lack of Garmin thing was an issue. I had my wrist pace band on my arm which was a life safer and I used the stop watch on my watch to try to shoot for a 4:30 finish. I went ahead of my friend at about mile 4 and didn't see her again. The rest of the race I ran on my own with my Ipod which I decided to take at the last minute, good call! I was about two minutes ahead of my pace band at the half way mark and then it seems I slowly started losing time. I made one bathroom pitstop, two stretch pitstops as I started to get really tight and sore and just generally slowed down. Foot was hurting a bit and I was having a few stomach issues.

The last few miles went on forever and while I continued to run, I felt like I was hardly moving. Finished feeling pretty yucky and needing some water. Saw one of my training partners in the finish shoot and she was definitely NOT looking good. This was her first marathon and she was shooting for a 4:00 - 4:15, she finished in 4:29 and seemed really disappointed. I think we forgot to tell her what a mental beat down and struggle the marathon distance can be!

The whole marathon thing is a major mental battle and the one thing I feel like I did pretty well was not to go out too fast. My rank went up throughout the whole course starting at 2835 at the 10k mark, 2874 at the half mark, 2807 at the 20 mile mark and finishing at 2693 so I guess I didn't crater as much as I thought I had. Learning how to run the race is a HUGE part of this event. I was a bit disappointed to miss my 4:30 goal pace, but I improved my marathon time by about 8 minutes so I did have a PR! Plus the shoe, foot thing was definitely a factor!

Found Doug, stumbled around for a bit, got a COLD (near frozen) bagel in the food tent and a couple of granola bars...very disappointing food tent! They didn't even have WATER!!!!! Thankfully Doug had a bottle of water for me.


A somewhat injured/sore foot was definitely an issue and I think the other thing I need to do is more speedwork!


They definitely need to do better on the water post race and the food, it was a real let down not to have water on hand after running 26.2 miles!