Med City Marathon Pace Report

The forecast was calling for hot weather and it was hot. The day started out pretty decent--it was overcast and breezy. I was actually a little chilly in my pacer singlet while I stood around before the race chatting with other pacers. Laura was also there to run the 1/2 marathon and she got to run with our pals Adam and Nate. As we stood around and talked I wished it could stay in the low 60s, cloudy, and windy the whole time.

But alas, it was not to be. The clouds left and the temperatures rose. Thankfully the wind kept blowing and that was pretty much the only respite. For the first 10ish miles I was running with a pretty good pace group. Around that time it started to get really warm. By mile 17 I'd say it was low to mid 80s and it was getting really miserable. At that point I lost the last person in my pace group--a nice lady who'd completed several ironmans and was racing her first marathon in 10 years (not counting the ironmans). From then on I had one guy who would occasionally catch up to me and then lose me at the water stops.

The Med City Marathon was a nice little race. With the heat they had added extra water stops and people were also passing out ice. It was nice to have water and Gatorade handy every mile or so. If nothing else I could at least dump water on my head to cool off for a moment.

I finished the race all by my lonesome--my pace group totally disappeared after mile 17. My final time was 3:24:48--pretty good for the 3:25 pace leader.

This past week I wrote my training plan for the Whistlestop Marathon. It's a pretty ambitious plan, so we'll see if I can actually make the time to put in the kind of miles I'm planning--and if my body can handle a volume and quality I've never reached before. Only 20 weeks to go!