2008 St. Louis Marathon
After struggling much of this winter to complete my long runs in freezing temperatures, I was very happy to see a beautiful forecast for Sunday, April 6th. The early forecast for rain was changed to partly cloudy with light winds. The early morning temperature was 42 degrees with an expected high near 70. It would be around 58 degrees when we finished our "training run". It doesn't get much better than that.
Looking forward to the Cincinnati Marathon in 4 weeks, the St. Louis Marathon was going to be my last long run. I was planning to run the first 20 miles at 8:45/mile and finish with whatever felt good, shooting for just under 4 hours. My friend Kelly had the same goal for St. Louis (while training for Boston and a 50-miler), so we decided to run together. Two other friends, John & Manoj, needed 20 miles for the day and would join us at mile 6 to run the last 20.
The first 6 miles went by quickly as I kept calling out that we were going out too fast. Our average pace for the first 6 miles was 8:20/mile -- a little quicker than our intended 8:45/mile. We got our pace a little closer to our goal when John & Manoj joined us at mile 6, but we were still averaging 8:30/mile. As much as we tried to slow down, the pace just seemed comfortable, so we went with it. At mile 16 I joked that if we kept up our pace, I would have an unintentional PR (my previous being 3:50 in Chicago 2006.) I quickly put that thought out of my mind knowing that the real race begins at mile 20 and the hills starting near 18 would be challenging. Besides this was just a training run, right?
Near mile 20, Kelly began to pull back a little with Manoj, but I wasn't ready to let up yet. At mile 22, John & I were still keeping the 8:30 pace and I told John I would PR if we managed 9:00 min/mile for the last 4 miles. With John setting the pace for me, we managed 2 more miles at 8:30 making a new PR almost guaranteed. I struggled with a hill and wind during mile 25 (9:20/mile), but with the excitement of a new PR in sight, I recovered for a fast finish, averaging 8:15/mile. When I came around the corner and saw the finish clock, I smiled. My final time: 3:46:32 -- a new PR (on a training run).
Some days all of the elements come together: weather, friends, rest, nutrition, etc and you just have to go with it. I owe a big thank you to Kelly, John & Manoj for setting the pace and seeing me through the race.
Now we’ll see if I can recover from my training run to race the Flying Pig Marathon in four weeks. If I can catch another break with the weather, I’m sure it will be a good run too.