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Archive for October, 2013

This year’s marathon was my most successful.  It wasn’t quite a PR, but I was 24 when I did that, and it was with a time I considered a disappointment – more than a ½ hour slower than I wanted to do, thanks to leg cramps early on.  And all my other marathons have been like that – injuries during training that prevented me from doing all the long runs I wanted to do, etc.

Not this year.  All the long runs went great, up to a slow 21-miler a month before, and a 13-miler and my planned race pace 2 weeks beforehand.   Based on a few online calculators where you predict your marathon time from your times in shorter races, I should have been able to do about a 4:08 based on my half marathon times. At the start line, I found the 4 hour 10 minute pace team from the Red Lizard Running club, and stuck with them right to the end.  The Red Lizards have the whole system down cold. It started at registration, where you could pick up an individual wristband with the mile split times for the pace you wanted to run, and find out which corral which group of pacers were starting. The red lizard cutouts on a stick were easy to spot and keep track of. Plus, the split times were “equal effort” and not just equal time. It was sooo nice that the mile 17 time was so leisurely; saved my quads on the approach to the St. Johns Bridge. I haven’t seen other pacers that do this. ‘really appreciated their efforts.  Not to mention the huge aid station they manned at Mile 24, the same place they took photos that they posted (for free!) that were better than any of the commercial photos this year.

Beth and Ruairí with me at the finish, after I changed clothes in a Porta Potty. 😉

Finishers’ Medal this year was pretty cool

The recorded timing from my GPS watch shows how good the Red Lizard team was at maintaining an even pace

I finished in the top third overall, and the top third in my age division. My favorite stat is “in the last 5 miles, you passed 371 people, and [only] 4 passed you” 🙂

Red Lizard pacer Karen (holding the sign) and me (in the yellow shirt) in the center of the photo, by Mile 24.

Another Mile 24 shot