Notes
I could start at the beginning, but when would that be, the start of the race, the start of the day, this year? Who knows or cares. I'll start with the day, waking up at 4:45 AM, got in my green tea for caffeine, 3 packs of oatmeal, and 1 scoop of heed in 16oz of water. Took the shuttle with my wife and her friend to the start. Waited around for a while then used the bathroom and went for a warmup jog about 30 minutes before the start. Felt great during the warmup run. It was 40 degrees and sunny, talk about perfect conditions. Better yet, a chance at getting a <2:50 at the same course as my first <3:00.
Got to the start about 5 minutes ahead of time, gotta love small races. The gun goes off and off we go. The first two miles 6:30 feels effortless. I apply the same effort to the next mile and I'm almost at 6:40 pace. I figured it was a fluke, maybe the mile marker was off or I'm going uphill. Next mile I pay more attention to the GPS and force pace a little, well actually a lot. By mile 5 it was pretty obvious this was not a pace I could hold. I still tried to force it but it was not working. It was starting to feel more like half marathon pace. The next few miles I just tried to stay as close to 6:30 as I could, which wasn't close.
By the half my legs were pretty close to trashed. With a 1:27 split and fading I was pretty sure I was not going to hit even a 2:54 but I kept trying to hold pace. It was not fun being passed by at least a runner per mile but I couldn't do crap about it. Every mile I kept waiting for my legs to finally cramp or just plain lock up like they usually do when I go out too fast. Luckily, I had great memories of this course and had no urge to give in. Let's just fucking run and get er done. I just wanted to get to mile 23 where I knew I had a quarter mile downhill. Finally I got there and I almost screamed out loud, let's finish this motherfuckers! I knew this downhill would give me a boost and was hoping it would carry me through the end, maybe even find another gear.
Finished that mile at 6:38 thanks to the downhill (slower than my first time on this course running my first sub 3). I was hoping to run those last two miles fast, but had no gas left. I just gave what I had left until mile 26. Hit mile 26 and thought I was sprinting, but yeah it was apparently only a 6:2X pace. I passed some guy even so.
Lackluster finish in 2:56:33, pretty damn disappointing despite struggling from halfway just to run a respectable time.