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This was my first marathon of the year and I was set to run it in stellar time.  First I would like to say that I am not at all dissapointed with my finish but I do know that I can go much faster than I did.  And I plan on doing so in my next marathon in September.  That being said I did manage to set a PR and I am extremely happy with my result.

My girlfriend(Emily) and I flew into San Diego on Thursday night and checked into the room.  The Rat(my running partner) and his brother in-law(Josh) came down on Friday and we celebrated my 36th birthday.  Saturday was pretty much a rest day but we did 2 easy miles.  I contacted luluorange and pushback and set up meetings for the morning.  We were also supposed to hook up with marathonerwannabe.

I rested well on Saturday and was up at 4:30 am for the race.  After some breakfast and stretching we woke up the others and started to get them ready to go.  We ended up leaving the house a little bit late and then we almost got lost because the gps told us to take an exit that was closed.  We took the next exit and started to get close but all of the streets were closed.  There were some people totally freaking out at one of the cops and the Rat and I knew it was time to get going.  We were about a mile from the start and it was about 6:20 or so.  We ended up jogging most of the way and got to the start as the wheelchairs were crossing the starting line.  I looked for pushback real quick but couldn’t see him so I went to my corral.

We had a good plan, follow the 3:15 pace group and if we felt good we would leave them at about mile 16 or 17 and start to push hard.  The gun went off and we were on our way.  The start of a marathon with 15k people is always a little bit sketchy.  You have to jump over people and zig-zag your way through the crowd.  It started to thin a bit and we were feeling good we were keeping with the pace group as well.

At about mile 3 we saw my Emily and Josh and yelled at them as we passed by.  It was about this point that we started a small downhill section and I started to break away.  I wasn’t keeping with the plan.  I felt like I needed to take advantage of things like hills to reach my lofty goal of 3:15.  Somewhere around mile 5 I felt like I was starting to get some blisters.  I kept running though and wasn’t going to stop until I had to.  I was keeping about a 7:25 pace for a long time and felt like I could go the whole way at that pace.  But I started to slow a bit and the Rat caught back up to me.

Then we reached the infamous side-downhill and I couldn’t help myself.  I was off again.  I cranked for a while and was passing everyone.  But when it flattened out again the Rat caught back up to me and by this time it was about mile 14.  I told him that I had to pee and he told me to race up front and go then catch up.  I was starting to burn out and after my bio break i couldn’t hold the pace.  I was slowing to around 8 minute miles and I would never see the Rat again.  That’s ok because if I could hold it around there I would still hit my first goal which was 3:30.

About mile 16 I could feel that something was horribly wrong.  My feet had swelled and my shoes were way too tight.  I could feel that my small toes were going to loose there toenails.  But I didn’t think it would happen untill after the race.  At mile 20 I felt my left toenail rip(or so I thought) but I just kept going.

I could see blood on the outside of my shoe.  By the time I got to mile 22 I knew that this was hurting my time too much and I would to stop and clip it or rip it off.  I flew into the medical station and called for clippers as I ripped off my shoe.  It wasn’t my toenail at all it was a gnarly blister on my pinky toe.  I pulled off my safety pin and stabbed it then slathered it with vaseline.  Then I stabbed the blister on my right foot right through my shoe.  I put my shoe and sock back on and was off again.

I knew I was close to the end so I decided to run through the pain.  It’s only temporary and for Pete’s sake it was only a blister right?  I repeated the mantra “I can run with pain” and I was able to pull it together and start passing people again.  This lasted for a couple of miles and I ended up having a really slow mile towards the very end.

I turned onto the military base and a guy caught up to me ” is that your mom?”  he said referring to my shirt.  ”Yeah” I said.  ”My mom just died too”  he replied.  Then he said “let’s bring it in strong for mom.”  That was all I needed and I was able to turn on the juice like nobody’s business.  I was once again passing everyone and ended up having a very strong finish just the way I like it.  I looked at my watch and I thought it said 3:23 but when I hit the stop I guess it didn’t work because I noticed it was still running a little bit later.  My official time ended up being 3:25:29.  More than 24 minutes off last years time!  And just in case you were wondering the Rat is going to Boston with a time of 3:13:18.

And here is the data from the Garmin but it is a little bit off.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Run, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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