So after all of that I ran the vermont city marathon and did better than I could have imagined. I finished in 3:58:46 and felt strong through the end. I met people who had run marathons in all 50 states and ran for a few miles with a guy who had run 100 marathons and run 50 under 4 hours. The energy at the event and on the run was incredible and has hooked me in to a culture that I want to explore further. Of course, this will take a lot of training which is the real benefit.
I set out to run the first 10 miles at 9:35, miles 10-18 at 9:09, then close the final 8 miles at 8:55 which should have theoretically brought me under 4 hours. The idea was to gauge the body at each interval and determine whether I was ready and able to go faster. The problem started when I began by running with the 4:15 pace runners. After a few miles I asked the question of what mile per minute pace they were running and learned that it put me slower than my goal. From there, the math was fuzzy at best and I just kept pushing my time down from miles 4 through 18. I tried to keep it around 9:05 to make up for the lost time but wasn’t sure whether the calculations would work out. In addition. as the race went on my math skills became worse and worse to the point that I had to ask a volunteer at the 20 mile mark how to calculate 9 x 6. The answer would tell me whether a 9 minute pace would get me there and of course the answer was no.
From that point, I just pushed as fast as I could go which ended up to be around 8:30 per mile or so. This resulted in passing many, many people and wondering whether I could sustain the pace. It was hard, but it felt good and it never felt that my body would quit. I tapped into solid reserves and knew the entire time that I had fueled well and that I had trained hard to be in this position. The images here show it all.
What a great experience. I biked 70 miles yesterday and ran a 5 mile race in Central Park today through some serious heat. What’s evident is that my barriers are changing and that my body can do much, much better and more. It will be interesting to adjust my expectations and to get more serious about results and training.
