Started out with/just in front of the 4 hour pace group and just took it "easy" just staying with that group. After a few miles I looked down and realized that my Z2 heart rate was keeping me in the 8:45-8:55 per mile pace, so I just stayed with that and left the pace group. Ended up getting passed by Nicole around mile 6 and we pretty much just yo-yo'ed for the rest of the race and kept pushing each other. Congrats Nicole on beating my by 7 seconds.;) Felt really good for most of the race, right up until mile 22. Just before that I started to feel warmer and started to get some slight tightening in my hamstrings and calves, so I started taking more gatorade and had a piece of banana. I think I could have used more banana, but I didn't see anymore after that point. This is when leaving my endurolytes at home came back to bite me in the butt I could have really used some and I couldn't find any on course. I am happy that I only walked when the cramps kicked in on the legs. I ran the rest of the race which was my goal.

I have to say that I am absolutely thrilled with this result. I was a little nervous going into this as I am not a huge runner and I really put a lot of pressure on myself to break 4 hours as I didn't hit my IM goal. I would have been happy with even just 3:59:59, so to go 7.5 minutes under my goal time is just great in my book. The only downside is that as I was talking to Danielle at lunch on the way home, I really don't know how I will be able to better this time for a while. This was really about as fast as I could go. Going to have to work on my form, efficiency, and just keep trying to put in the run miles.

Bring my endurolytes.

Grabbed some water, my finish metal, and my shirt and walked around with Danielle until we found talltridad, djdavey, nicole, lunatick and some others. Chatted, ate, and had my beers and then took off for home as I wanted to watch the Tour of California which I am doing now.


My running speed.


I think this was a great race and it was really cool to run through the stadium before the finish. I think that this course is good for my running abilities.