Notes
This was an excellent race, my best race longer than 10 miles.
I started off in the chase pack (which eventually caught the leader long after they pulled away from me) and we went out quite a bit faster than I was planning. However I realized after a few miles that even though it was faster than I had planned it probably was the best pace for me. Around four miles the pack started to put the pedal down and I let them go. One other guy and I then slowly picked people off as they fell off the pack for the next few miles. By 8 miles it was just the two of us with no one else in sight. I could tell that I would very slightly gain on him on the downhills and he would open the gap back up on the uphills. I started wondering if he was working a bit too hard on those uphills and/or being obsessive about a GPS. Then shortly after 12 miles we were going up a short, steep hill and I saw him jerk his head a few times. I figured that was my chance. He had about 30 meters on me at that point and I surged up the hill and caught him right at the top. This being a complete bluff on my part, I figured it would work better if I blew right by him instead of tucking in behind him and try to look better than I felt. To add to the psychological trick, there was fortuitously a water station right there so I probably confused him a lot by moving at that point (I had no idea there was going to be a water station at the top of the hill and around the corner). After that I concentrated on keeping my form clean and staying upright. I knew that my opponent was still there - because I could hear him - and I did not want to give him the opening that he gave me in mile 12. I guess it worked pretty well, and also he had trouble with the mile-long turny uphill in mile 14, because when I crested the last hill with about 1.5 miles to go I was free and clear. I could not see anyone ahead of me but I figured it was OK to take a risk of blowing up because I had at that point an insurmountable lead on my opponent. So I slammed the pedal down and ran for time on the last mile, not worrying too much about running out of gas at the end.
That was hard, but worth it! The splits look uneven but if one looks at the course elevation profile, they really were pretty even except for the slow 14th mile when I was recovering from my surge (and granted, running up a large hill so who knows)
For some reason, despite being called a "metric marathon," the race was marked in miles. It doesn't make much sense to me but who knows.
If the mile splits were accurate (obviously two of them weren't but it seemed to get back on track after that) then I would have been about 35 seconds under my half marathon PR at that point in the race. My average pace today was just a little bit faster than said half marathon PR.
Finally, this was an excuse to test a new lacing scheme for the Kinvara 5 which gives my wide feet a lot more room and is more comfortable. I was a little worried it might get loose as I ran but it didn't, so I will be doing this in the future.
http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/507929914