Notes
(180). Official time 63:02. Perfect weather: clear, cool, windless. Official splits: 31:18 at 5 miles, and 39:02 at 10k. The plan was to pace for a PR, then pick it up in the second half if possible. I executed the first half perfectly. My split at halfway put me on 62:36 pace, which is 13 seconds under my PR. But I started running low on energy after 10k. They had water and gatorade on the course every 2 miles, and I had a gel in my pocket. In hindsight, perhaps I should have taken in some fuel at the 4 mile station, but it didn't even occur to me. At the 6 mile station, I tried to but spilled the cup by knocking it out of the guy's hand. At 8 miles, by which time I was slowing down, I succeeded at getting a cup but ended up with water instead of gatorade (as I intended) and stupidly didn't eat my gel with it. So I took in no calories during the race, and you can see the consequence in my splits the last 3 miles: I slowed down when I should have sped up. But I didn't slow down much, and actually it's kind of impressive that I hung on as well as I did without fueling properly. So the fitness is there; I just made a dumb fueling mistake. A guy in my club (Mike Pryce-Jones) was with me at 7 miles but finished strong in 62:11. I think I could have stayed with him if I'd just eaten a gel around halfway.