I did a lot better than I thought I would. In training, my 20-mile run was ~4:15, so I was thinking a good scenario would be a 5:30 marathon.

My coach told me to keep a max of 80% MHR for the first hour, then 85% after that. At first I thought he was crazy (HR too high -- my 20-miler was 65-70%), but decided to try it and it worked out well. My HR at the beginning was higher than I expected for longer than I expected, but maybe it was the cold weather or the excitement of being there.

I ran most of the way but walked some of the small hills and sometimes to drink or eat. I had my amphipod nutrition belt with 4 8oz bottles: 2 waters, 1 gu, and 1 Perpetuem paste.

At first I was running towards the back of the pack. I forget when it was but it was well before half way that I caught up to and passed the 5 hour pace team. I couldn't believe it. I was ecstatic. To my complete amazement, I eventually caught up to and hung with the 4:45 pace team for a while. After a while though, I made the conservative decision to stick with my HR strategy and let them go.

It started getting hard at about mile 16. It was difficult to eat or drink enough, and when I drank it was just water. I should have been drinking more sports drink during the race. I felt a little dizzy a couple times and I guessed it was dehydration because it felt like I felt at the end of my HIM, so I tried to drink a lot at that point.

There were lots of spectators and volunteers, which helped the time to go by.

During the race, I had some pain in my right forefoot, left ankle, and in general from the waist down. The day after (as I write this), I'm pretty sore from the waist down: feet, ankles, shins, calves are OK, knees, quads, hams are OK, hips, glutes are OK. I had some trouble sleeping last night because of the soreness and it hurt to lay on my side because of my hips.

I'm not sure what else to say about it. It was just 5 hours of increasingly difficult and painful running, but I definitely feel a sense of accomplishment and am glad I did it. I'm looking forward to doing another one and qualifying for Boston someday.

Drink more sports drink (or something) for electrolyte replacement.

Hobbled around for a little while to keep moving then sat down for a few minutes. Walked a few blocks to the car. At home, I took a quick shower and went into the hot tub. Aahhhhh!


More long-distance run training.


Either I was late or they didn't have much food available at the end. For the life of me, I couldn't find any of the gu or drink that they were serving on the course available at the finish. I had some orange slices, 2 cups of tomato soup and a Clif Builder bar (luckily there was a Clif rep there).

The course is nice in that it's mostly downhill and is point-to-point. It was better also because I live here and know many of the areas that we ran through.

It was pretty cold but wasn't raining. The only place where the course was wet was at the aid stations.