Notes
BIB # 4118
Temperature at the start was 64F and sunny and climbed thoughout the day. By the time I finished, temperature was at 72F.
Plan for the race was to start and finish with the 3:10 pacer. My friend Jeff was running the Half for 1:35 so we would run together for about the first 9 miles and then the half would turn around.
Gun goes off and we start the race. There are many people running with the pacer so it's relatively crowded in the pack. I make sure we stay just behind the pacers (3:10 and 1:35). The first few miles click off relatively easy. We get into St. Anthony Main and it's sort of a drag to have to run on the brick road. Many people jump up on the sidewalk after they are tired of running on the uneven brick but the pacers stay on the brick road so I stay on the brick road with them. I'm sure when the course was marked on the brick road so those running on the sidewalk was probably cutting the course short. We roll down hill on West River Parkway and as we climb the hill up to Franklin, we start to lose some people from the pack. The 1:35 pacer for a while was actually behind the 3:10 pacer. From hearing everybody huffing and puffing going up the hill, it was obvious to me that most would probably not finish at their goal time. We hit the half turn around and probably 75% of the people turn around so the group was instantly cut down to about 25% of its size for the marathon group. I keep with the pacer and one by one we slowly start to lose many in the group. By mile 16 which was deep in Fort Snelling, we had something like 4 runners in addition to the pacer. We quickly lost one runner there and then another as we made the climb out of Fort Snelling and the super steep hill reaching up to Mile 18. At the end of the Fort Snelling parking lot, I see the first casualty of the race. A runner is in extreme heat exhaustion and the medics are there to attend to him. We continue on just 2 runners and the pacer and I think we're going to finish like this when at Mile 20, we lose the last runner. Now it's just me and the pacer. We have only a 10k left and I know I can make it but I'm starting to really hurt. As we come out of Minnehaha Falls and head up West River Parkway, I feel like I just want to get done and going faster is not going to hurt any more than going at the pace I'm going. I push a little ahead of the pacer and he tells me I'm going a little too fast and that since he's the pacer he's going to hold back a little as he has his pacing duties to attend to. After the brief speed up after Mile 22, I slow back down and keep myself just ahead ofthe pacer. I fmake it to Mile 25 and push all I have up the hill and finish at 3:09:35. I turn around and see the pacer finishing just behind me.