Notes
After many mistakes leading up to the race, my brother Kevin and I ran the race as we should have and achieved our goal of a sub-3 hour marathon. PR, negative split and half marathon PR. Effort was 10 based on the endurance and last 5k not the speed of first 20mi.
We were in the second corral in the green start, but due to construction and some sort of wave start we were about 3 minutes to the start line and passing people throughout the race. We ran pretty steady with most miles between 6:40-6:50 per mile pace with some variation for the uphill and downhill miles and a few 6:30-6:40. It was really 20 miles of warmup and 10k of pain. It got pretty tough after 20 and much more so after 23. Kevin was dropping off a bit at 23, we passed Howard who I encouraged to help us in under 3:00 but he was cramping. I yelled at Kevin to not give up and telling him I was not going to give up my goal. I went on ahead maintaining the pace, although at a much greater effort, not knowing if Kevin was keeping up the fight behind me. I thought I had a little time cushion but not much and knew I needed to push the effort to avoid dropping off. I crossed the finish knowing I was somewhere around 2:58:30 net time and walked for a minute or two to avoid cramping. I soon saw Kevin come through and he was just under 3 hours net time (2:59:54). I was extremely happy to see that. I was very pleased with the results, the weather was great (started out sunny and around 50 progressing to cloudy and around 55) and the crowds of spectators were huge.
Half splits: 1:29:21, 1:29:03.