Marathon: 6:00:02 Official Time, 6:07:37 Gun Time

Woo Hoo!

After 10 months of training, 689.33 miles, and 3 pairs of running shoes, I finally accomplished one of my life's longest-held dreams: run a marathon. I don't remember how old I was when I first wanted to run a marathon, but this has been a goal for around 35 years. With the help of my family and the Good Lord, that dream finally came true. My "gun time" as reflected in the clock, was 6:07:37. However, this was a "chip timed" event, so my official time was 6:00:02. My official time started when the chip attached to my shoe crossed the starting line, and there were so many runners that it took 7:35 just to get to the start.

My family was wonderful. Every three miles or so, Jen, Heather, Cornell, and David were waiting along the side of the road with signs like "GO KING DAD GO," and they would cheer me on. They were so good that other runners were smiling and enjoying their cheers. After I passed, they quickly loaded up, jumped into the van, and headed off to the next spot. And, when my race plan became soaked and unreadable, Jennifer wrote timing notes to me, and our sons Cornell and David ran them out to me. All the pictures on the race were taken by Jen or Heather. K2 was not here (he's stationed at Ft Hood in Texas) and I wore an Army workout shirt in his honor. So, it was a real family affair. Here's the basic race info:

Gun time: 6:07:37

Chip time: 6:00:02

First 10 K: 1:08:39

Halfway (13.1 mi) 2:34:31

20 Mi: 4:22:37

Last 10K: 1:37:25

Total Runners: 5,265

Completed Marathon: 1075

Completed Half-Marathon: 3431

Race Analysis: I'm a lousy runner (see my "A Bit of History" at the bottom of the blog), so I simply could not just go out and run 26.2 miles. I felt that, to finish on time (or even finish at all), I needed to make a smart plan and stick to it like glue. The original plan was to finish in 6 hrs. To do this I would run the first 15 miles in 3 hours, then jog-walk the rest. All of my training over the past many months was designed to meet these objectives. I recorded stats on every run (all 129 of them, the marathon was 130), and after analyzing the stats I revised my overall plan to 6:05:30, and my 15 mile split to 3:10:30.

I started much stronger than I expected. I ran a sub 12 min mile for the first 8 miles, and at the 10 mile mark was 8:45 ahead of schedule. By the halfway point I was 8:31 ahead of schedule. Things got a bit tougher at around 13.5 miles, as the route turned into the wind. I slowed just bit, but I still made my 15 mile split in 3:03:43, which was 6:47 ahead of schedule.

I did well until just after the 18 mile mark, which is where the path starts uphill towards Holmes Lake. The wind was brutal, and I finished mile 19 in 17:03, my worst mile in the race. One of the gusts of wind almost knocked me down. I was in the wind for part of mile 20, but was still able to make up :23 seconds.

Miles 21 and 22 went poorly. My back was to the wind, but mile 21 was mostly uphill, and I had to make my first and only bathroom stop. Mile 22 was just hard, and betwen the two I lost a total of 1:52. Miles 23 and 24 were flat, so I made up some of the lost time (around 1:09), but I slowed considerably on mile 25 as the rain started to fall again and the course underwent a long, uphill slope. After mile 25, with the end in sight, I ran my fastest mile since mile 14 - 14:58. The last .2 went very quick, as I sprinted to the finish. Overall, I finished 5:28 under my revised schedule.

Weather conditions for my first marathon were a bit icky, but I'm not sure whether they were a curse or a blessing. We started in moderate rain with the temp in the low 60's. Constant rainfall for the first 14 or so miles, then the rain cleared quite nicely for awhile. The rain started falling again when I was about 2 or so miles out, and seemed to increase in intensity as I approached the finish line. The wind became brutal at times (gusts up to 40 mph) and, as I noted above, one gust near Holmes Lake almost knocked me down. The local newspaper referred to the weather as being "a blasting wind and steady rain," and the 2nd place finisher said that "the winds were the toughest he had faced."

All that having been said, the rain was warm so I had a comfortable body temperature the entire run. Further, I enjoy rain, and many of my practice runs were in the rain, so perhaps the rain was a mixed blessing. The wind was no blessing at all, but a couple of years ago the temp at race time was around 30F. So, it certainly could have been worse.

Songs: About a week before the marathon I put out a call for songs. Not much response. What I did receive, coupled with "my kind" of music, made for an eclectic, yet fun, mix. The music ranged from the 80's (Phil Collins, Bonnie Tyler, Styx, Starship) through the 90's (Alanis Morissette, Tal Bachman), post grunge (All American Rejects), to stuff I'm not sure where or how to classify (Five For Fighting, Simple Plan). I had Avril, Kelly Clarkson, and K2's Happy Hardcore and Trance Stuff (Tiesto, Maxi-Jazz, etc). This was backed by some real, genuine classics (Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, the William Tell Overture, etc). I didn't schedule the songs in any particular order, but some came up at perfect times (Bolton's "I can go the distance" from Hercules, 1812 Overture, K2's electronic stuff, Kansas' The Point of No Return"). I had 80 songs in all, and got through almost all of them by the time I finished. My only musical faux pas was to leave out some of Jen's disco songs (including YMCA by the Village People). Oh well.

I now have a variety of pictures, and should have them posted by Wednesday.