Notes
I ran the first lap in 1:16ish, just about 7:00 pace. Ran with Jonathan Eckburg for a while and then let him go. The effort felt really easy, but the snowcover was doing a number to my muscles. I stayed on 7:00 pace more or less through mile 20, but my hips and back seized up almost instantaneously and I went from running 7 flat to walking. I went a little past the second loop, but decided to drop out since it was all misery and I didn't want to spend a couple weeks recovering from (to my mind) a wasted effort.
I did feel like I wimped out when I saw what many other went through in order to finish. But I guess we all have different sorts of motivations for the stupid things we do,
The race was COLD, maybe 12 degrees at the start, plus they held us at the line for maybe 20 minutes. Also, no gu on the course, and I couldn't eat that candy and stuff, so maybe that was part of the meltdown. John loaned me two gus that I ate in the first 10 miles. I left mine in the car, and since I had to stand in a long registration line I didn't have time to go back to get them. In retrospect this was a bad choice.
A long-ass way to drive for a DNF, but beers afterwards with good folks took off the sting and made it all worth it... It's 80% about that stuff anyways and an occasional good race is frosting on the cake.
It is what it is.
A day later, I am pretty damn sore. This failure was all muscular.