Notes
My first DNF in 9 starts. The weekend got off to a weird start with realizing I had forgotten my Garmin about an hour into the ride. That says it all right there. I think the reality was that I just went through the motions in this training cycle without a strong focus on my goal or training itself. If you go back into my log, you can that I had a strong start and then just sort of slowly faded. I can’t blame on it the new job or travel because this started way before that. I just wasn’t mentally or physically into it. Early on I started talking about just breaking my PR and not going for anything more aggressive but in the back of my mind I knew 3:45 would be more likely no matter what I said. Cremer had an extra watch so I used his giant Commodore 64 watch (I think it was a Garmin 305). I never went out the day before to play around with it but just turned it on, was given a brief explanation of the screen and that was it. When the race started suddenly it seemed like the watch wasn’t starting. Cremer tried to help but not go. Once I realized I had no watch I decided to use my phone as my timer. I asked another runner how much time gone by and she said 3 minutes and 52 seconds. Easy enough. A short time later the watch is working, I hit lap at mile 2, and just start going by current pace and realize that the total mileage is only off by .27. The first mile was high 7s and that seemed fine. Maybe a little hot. From there thru 5 miles I was always just under 8 mm. When the hills started I decided to ease up and just run and I lost about 2 minutes. By 8 miles in it started to really suck. By 10 my pace picked back up the idea of quitting was already started to kick in. At 11, I told myself to give it to 13 to see if I could turn it around. No dice. At 13, I stopped my watch and texted Eric “I’m done”. I’ve never been so happy to stop. I had a little snack and a Bud Light in the car and then started the hiding game when we passed Cremer and Gwen. The funny thing is, I’m not even disappointed or mad at myself. I never should have run this race to begin with. I’m definitely taking a break. Maybe a fall 2019 marathon? Maybe not.