Pre-race: Had a great time talking to people at the expo during packet pick-up. Got up early, had a small breakfast, and then drove to Merlin Olsen Park to load the bus. I rode the bus up with my niece, and had the usual good brief visits with some people on the blog and others I like to chat with before a race... I was a little worried about my stomach, being sick on Wednesday, Thursday, and a little bit yesterday, but overall I felt pretty good. Race: After the gun went off, I actually felt pretty good. I started out a little fast, and looked down at my Garmin and forced myself to slow down a little. Miles 1-7 went really well. A little before mile 8 (which is about the start of the TOU Half Marathon), my stomach started rumbling. It got me a little worried, so I slowed down a little. It went away after about a half mile so I went back up to the pace I was running previously and felt pretty great. I hit the half-way point right around 1:29. I thought "Great, I may be able to PR". Nice tail wind at the mouth of the canyon, and continued to go well.
Then about mile 15 or my stomach started acting up a little and I started feeling out of energy. This forced me to slow down. I thought I'll run a slower pace, let my stomach recover, and when the 3:05 pacer catches me I'll run with them. The pacer caught me right before mile18. I ran with them until we turned off the highway and partially up the first set of hills. I dropped back a little about mile 19 not feeling too well. By this time I let the stomach issues, lack of energy, and not hanging with the 3:05 pacer kill me mentally. Usually on a marathon I can run through the wall pretty well, but the wall was amplified more than ever. In the past 11 marathons I've never felt as trashed or in as much pain as I did about mile 25. The 3:15 pacer passed me, and I continued chugging along slowly. I came in at 3:16:37. I've done 6 marathons faster than this so I was a bit disappointed with my time. However, I can't complain--I never stopped running and still took 1st in the Clydesdale (over 200 pounds). Post Race: It took about an hour and a half for my stomach to settle down--I didn't feel good at all, but tried to take in as much fluids as I could. Eating made it worse. Later, after things settled down, I had some good visits with my niece, friends, and some co-workers that ran it. Also, had a good visit with Jake at the awards presentation. This will be my last race as a clydesdale. In order to improve my time, be less prone to injury, and feel better while running I need to lose at least 25 more pounds. 26 years ago I wrestled in college at 177 lbs . That is now my target weight. So the experiment now begins to see how losing weight will affect my running. We'll see how it goes :-).
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