Notes
I finished 5th
So here is the deal: This race was billed as a marathon but the geniuses who organized it measured the course with a gps watch. Based on my time through the first half, during which I believe I was running 6:30 pace on average, I am saying each loop was 14.8 miles. My assertion is being corroborated by the fact that one lady told me that she had her gps watch on and despite the tree coverage, which always leads to an underestimate, she had the loop at 13.7. I also talked to the guy that got 2nd place in the race who has run a number of road and trail marathons (he is a 2:40 guy on the road) and he agreed that the course was at least 29 miles.
Now that the explanation is out of the way on to the race itself. Since I went into it not knowing it was long I just went out and tried to grind the 6 30 or 6 40 pace that I felt myself capable of maintaining. I did myself a few disservices in the race. One section, about 1/3 of the way into the first loop was poorly marked and I took a wrong turn. That turn made me go from being about 1 minute in the lead to being way back in 7th place, at least a minute behind the new leader, possibly more. So that detour was probably somewhere around 500 meters. Instead of being sensible about it I decided to try to get back into the lead as fast as possible. Terrible move tactically. I started dropping about 5 45 pace until i caught up to, and passed, the new leader (who is the guy who ended up second overall). The second thing I did poorly for myself was my utilization of aid stations. They were each spaced about 2 miles apart. I switched off between water and gatorade at each. They were doing them in cups, not bottles, so because i tried to just grab them and go i ended up getting about 1/3 of each cup actually into my mouth. On two unfortunate occasions I got gatorade in my eye. This meant that when I got to the later parts of the race, around mile 24 or so I was pretty much out of energy. I started getting tunnel vision really badly and was stumbling about 4 miles from the finish, which wouldnt have been so bad if the course was an even 26.2. I could have toughed it out for about a kilometer. Instead I had to walk a fair bit and spend several minutes at an aid station getting a lot of gatorade, and water into my system, as well as some trail mix. It was during my stumbling and tunnel vision that I lost my lead and got passed by a second person. After the aid station I was running some REALLY slow miles into the finish and that was where I lost the other two spots. very disheartening.
One idea that matt (the guy who got second) suggested to me was trying out a road mini marathon. He thinks based on what I told him of my training and what I showed, especially in the early stages of the race, that I should be very capable of going under 1:15 which is about 5:45 pace. I must admit that I think it extremely unlikely that I would have run out of gas in a mini based on the training I did to prepare for this race. Lots of 12 and 14 milers definitely adapt you well for that distance.
This was a bit of an adventure (possibly misadventure as times) and a learning experience.