I was shooting to break 3:20 and thought that around 3:17 would be a pretty good target. There was a 3:15 and 3:25 pace group but no 3:20. So I started in between those two groups. About a mile into the race a bunch of us realized that we were all shooting for 3:20 and that perhaps we should stick together. That lasted for a bit, but after about a couple of miles the de-facto 3:20 group started to break up. However, one woman was pretty much running the same pace as me and was targeting just under 7:30 miles, so we stuck together. We pretty much ran together through mile 21. She was a fantastic runner and was a great motivator. The miles just clicked by despite the cold and sometimes heavy rain coming down.

At about mile 20 I started to feel pretty tired and my pace dropped off a bit. After finished the last sorta-hill at mile 21.5, I picked it up on the downhill, but not nearly as much as my marathon-friend. She just kicked it at this point. I tried hard to catch her but couldn't. The last 4 miles were rough, but not unusually so (they always are). I faded a bit, but not nearly as bad as I did in my previous marathon where I blew my goal time in the last 6 miles. This time I came in just where I hoped I would - about 2 1/2 minutes ahead of my goal and a 5 min PR. I was very happy with this performance.

Not much. I gave this everything I had. The one thing that helped me the most in this race when compared to my last marathon was using salt tablets. I cramped severly at the National Marathon last march and it hampered my peformance a lot. No cramps this time around, and also my recovery seems to be going better as well.

Just kept walking, very slowly. The hot chicken soup they had was the best thing ever! The pizza - not so much...


nothing - very pleased with this time and I gave it all I had.


The only gripe I had about the race was that the starting line scene was very disorganized. The parking lot only had 8 port-a-potties and a lot of people thought that would be the only ones avaialble. But, there were tons more at the starting line. Also, no one said where the bag drop-off would be and everyone made their way to the starting line assuming that it would be there. Good thing it was!