Notes
Virtual Boston Marathon down in KC with Will and a big group of KC people, ran about 2:45:18
Going in my goal was to go out around 2:45 pace then negative split the second half to run in the low 2:40s. Woke up at about 5am for the 6:30am start. Got some belvitas down and had water and coffee and used the bathroom before we left to the park. We got to the park at like 6:20 and ran over to the bathrooms but they were locked so just had to pee in the bushes. Definitely needed to do another round of number 2 but thought I might be okay.
We started a little after 6:30, the course was a super flat loop of about 6.5 miles. Quickly spread out and it was a group of 5 of us just chilling the first lap clicking off good splits. Will and I stopped to pee in some trees at like mile 5.5 then caught back up to the group pretty quick. Just kept chilling the second lap, but towards the end of lap 2 my gut was feeling pretty rumbly. Hoped the bathrooms would be open at like mile 12.5 and thankfully they were, and took care of business. Will ran around the parking lot to wait for me so I went through halfway with him somewhere around 1:23.
We caught back up to the group after a couple but they were slowing down a bit so Will and I went by them. Kaylee and Macy were along on their bikes so we were able to get water which was nice. Everything was feeling good but then towards the end of the 3rd lap my gut was rumbly again. Dipped into the same bathroom at about mile 19 and took car of business again. After this bathroom break I felt a ton better so started cranking a bit to catch up to Will. He ran a little extra out and back to wait for me so we were back together at about mile 21. We chilled together for a couple miles and I was feeling really good. So I dropped the pace a bit and ran 5:42 and 5:35 for miles 24 and 25 feeling great. The last mile was a loop around the park and I thought I'd be able to crush that but it was harder than I'd expected with dodging people and just the distance got to me a bit. Finished the last lap and stopped at 26.24.
Total time was 2:45:18, and if you take out my bathroom stops its 2:43:04 so not too bad, and my legs and breathing felt great throughout. For most races I try to wake up 3.5 - 4 hours before race time to get all the bathroom needs taken care of, and I think if I would have done that for this I wouldn't have had to take the second two bathroom stops. But not a huge deal, I wanted to treat this more like a LR instead of a race effort so that was fine. Took down two Maurten gels, one at mile 9ish and one at mile 15ish and took water from Kaylee throughout. Was originally planning a 3rd gel around 20 but after my mile 19 bathroom stop things felt fine and I wasn't worried about bonking so opted not to take the last one. Overall, a good effort on a nice loop and about what I wanted out of this