My first marathon

Waking up at 4:45 to go run 26.2 miles isn't something I do every day. Or any day up to this point. That's what happened on this cool Saturday morning in mid-September. With the help of my lovely and supportive girlfriend, who was my chauffeur and photographer for the day, we made our way from home to the high school where the marathon would take place. 

I am in the middle in white wearing no. 3.

The drive there in the dark was not as difficult as expected. We only needed to ask for directions once. Upon arrival at the well-hidden school I promptly made my way to the packet pickup station and tried to best gather my nerves and Gu packets. This being my second race I hadn't really planned out my gear beyond extending my running playlist to hit the 4-hour mark. I ended up going with a fuel belt that I've only used a handful of times, most prominently during my half marathon back in May. All that was left now was to gather by the start line. Unlike my previous race there was no pushing or shoving to get near the front. I assumed this was because most people, like me, had absolutely no idea how to get from our current destination to the trail in the correct order. I just knew I was going south. As the Sun started to show itself on the horizon the race began. Thankfully a bike took off in front of us to lead the way. A man with a British accent, whose name I would later learn is Keith, yelled out, "I'm in the lead! I'm in the lead!" to general amusement. 

From there we took off around the track. I settled in behind some of the early leaders and people participating in the 5-person marathon relay. We traversed through a mile of light hills on our way to the trail. From there I settled in behind a group of two runners who were keeping around a 7:30 pace. I ran behind them, trying to keep myself from going out too fast, with my headphones blaring bad hip hop music (for some reason this stuff is like running on crack for me) through mile 7. At that point I took my headphones off and started to chat a bit. Eric and Keith were both great running companions for the first half. Turns out Keith ran a mountainous 100-Miler last weekend. It was not surprising that he decided to drop off the pace a bit. Eric and I then picked it up, knocking off a few miles in the 7:10s. Tearing through the miles we passed one of the remaining leaders and one of the marathon relayers (kind of a letdown). I honestly had no idea how many people were still ahead at this point. I didn't anticipate feeling this good or being in a position to chase down anyone, let alone the leader. 

Thankfully this guy was here to show me the way. This
poor guy didn't stop or get water for 3+ hours. 

As we passed a few more aid stations people started telling us that the leader was only a few minutes ahead. Unconsciously I think I started picking up the pace; I noticed Eric starting to run slightly behind me at this point, around mile 11-12. When we hit the half marathon at just under 1:37 I knew things were going pretty well. It was my goal leading into this race to run negative splits on the half marathons. I have never managed to achieve this in a meaningful training run so it's pretty amazing that it worked here. We kept up a slightly sub-7:00 pace for another mile or so until Eric and I finally glimpsed what we believed to be the leader ahead, although it was difficult to tell on the covered path. When the pace cycler wearing a prominent orange jacket became visible about 40 meters ahead of him I knew we had found our target. Just as I commented to Eric how miserable it would be to be running all by yourself out front he began to lose pace.

I was really hoping we would keep pushing each other forward for the rest of the race. It turns out Eric completely fell apart at this point, eventually finishing with, in his words, a disappointing time of 3:41 and change. I kept going on. As I crept closer to the leader it became apparent that he was having some difficulty as well. Coming up alongside him I asked how things were, to which he mentioned something about tight legs. I didn't put much stock in this as the guy had been running the race in front for the last 14-15 miles. I assumed he would put up a pretty good fight from here. While I still felt lively I moved forward with my pace staggering around 7:00. I began to blaze forward, eventually losing sight of the former leader behind me. 

This pace was actually surprisingly easy for me to keep up. Taking in Gu for only the second time and grabbing water at every aid station really helped. I had been expecting a huge wall around mile 20. If I encountered anything like this it was more of a white picket fence than a wall. I climbed past it in about a half mile and moved on at the same clip. It wasn't until mile 23 that I realized the how amazing it was that I had lasted this long. I had only run this far once, a paltry 24-miler at 9:00 pace. 

As my journey on this shady, flat trail came to an end around mile 24 I was greeted with a not so friendly climb into the final town on my stop. This was by far the hardest portion of the run. My pace fell pretty sharply at this point down to what I'd guess was 8:30. After the initial climb, the rest of the race was rolling hills through town on route to the finish line downtown. My legs came undone around mile 25 and I started frantically asking people how much longer until the finish. Despite not seeing anyone behind me for almost 10 miles, I found myself compulsively glancing over my shoulder. I suppose this helped me finish strong with a pretty tight set of wheels under me. I ran the final mile in the 7:30s, coming in to a small crowd and my beautiful girlfriend taking photographs. The time was just under 3:09:00.

Stopping felt good.

As I sat there contemplating what had just happened and trying to get my legs to move people began approaching me. Being congratulated for something you do 4 days a week is a very strange sensation. Surprisingly it was Keith, the recent 100-mile finisher, who crossed the finish line behind me in 3:21 and change.  From there I spent the rest of my day soaking up the wonders of small-town life, namely walking around from water stand to Porta-John. It was worth waiting around for 2 hours until awards were distributed. They gave me $200 in gift cards to spend in town, which meant I found the only sporting goods store (I was amazed it was open) and bought up some winter gear. Full-compression regalia, ftw. This was a nice end to a fantastic day.  

Rough splits from Runkeeper app (started the first mile before the gun went off):

10:21

7:28

7:34

7:17

7:13

7:32

7:31

7:26

6:57

6:51

7:05

7:13

7:05

6:56

6:58

6:50

6:34

6:30

7:06

7:06

6:55

6:54

7:10

7:17

7:36

7:36