My seventh derby festival marathon:

I knew from the start that my fitness was not good. Most of my training cycle I was hurt and miss so many days of training. My longest run was only 16 miles. My muscle strain in my glutes was not heal.

Yet! I still had a goal of running a BQ of 3hrs 6 min. This was a long shot and I told my friends that. The weather was nice not to hot are cold about 50 degrees with sun all day. The last two years it rain like doing the race.

I went to the race with my friend Kevin who has been with me all my derby festival marathons. This time he was running his first full marathon. The race gun went off at 7:30 am.  I was line up right behind the elite marathon runners.

My first ten miles of the race:

My goal before the race was to run the first 9 miles slower then in other years. I look at my past race history and saw my ealy miles was way to fast. This went out the door when I ran into this very attractive woman.

I ask her what is your goal? she say 3 hrs 5 min. I say Ok!  We talk about working together. Her PR was 3:10 and my PR 3:08. I went with her pace  but knew this was going to hurt me later in the race. Her first mile was like 6:33 the next 6:42 the third 6:41. This pace was way to fast.

Even when I BQ last year my first 3 miles was not run at this pace. I decided to back off and yet her go. Women always get me in trouble! She would go on and finish second in the women division with a time on 2 hrs 57 min.

I ask her on Instagram about this? She say this was not her plan before the race.  She put in about 60 miles a week.  Her long run time was run about a minute slower than her marathon pace goal. We became friends on instagram.

I went on to hit the wall about mile 10 and finish in 3 hrs 37 min my second slowest time ever. I was not expected to run a sub 3 hour today. After I left the park with many hills it was time to enjoy the race. Forget about time and BQ’s.

This  was the only time I did not care about time but just to finish the race was my goal. I was able to do this without walking and using the bathroom.

My marathon lessons:

Lessons number one- run your own race! I should have learn this a long time ago. You have to stick to your game plan even if somebody has the same race goal.  I may have run 10 to 15 min fastest if I didn’t run her pace. I am not blaming her for my race.

Lessons Number Two- Respect the distance- You can’t cheat the marathon and hope to do well. If the fitness is not there it will show up on race day. My aerobic base was small for this race. When I ran my fastest marathon last year my mileages for 16 weeks was much greater.

Lessons number Three- Just have fun! We are mortal runners not running for a paycheck enjoy the race without putting a lot of pressure on a PR are BQ. Just have fun and think to yourself I can run a marathon wow!!!