What a beautiful day!!! Rain the past two days, followed up with the clearest skies and most beautiful views I’ve seen in quite some time. Weather was good, almost too good. Must have been mid 60s.

I beat my goal of 1:35 with a 1:33:13. Placement stats were:

I’m very pleased with my performance. I would have loved to push to break 1:30, but that day is in the future. It wasn’t today.

I stuck to the strategy, but my heart rate was much higher than expected (averaged 157 or so, and was north of 150 most of the time). I had to take a leak in mile 2, and it was much longer than I expected and took up about 40 seconds. Didn’t realize that how big of a deal those small bathroom stops are as that was the difference in breaking the 1:33 barrier.

Here are my splits:

I ran a bit more than the 13.1, so the pace on the Garmin was 7:05 but actual pace was 7:07. You can see the pee mile in mile 2 at 7:36, and then I basically sprinted to catch up on some of that time. Mile 4 was a big turning point for me. You can see here my heart rate average for that mile went up quite a bit, and my pace slowed from the prior mile. I noticed my pace getting slower with a higher heart rate. Not a good combo. Then, in the next mile, I was able to go downhill a bit and my heart rate recovered. From there, I didn’t look back, pushing my body harder and harder to get the pace down.

After I passed the slight incline in mile 10, I wanted to push hard, but the tightness in my right hamstring prevented me from pushing it until the last mile. I didn’t want to go out too hard in case it tightened up. I could feel my form compensating for the tightness, and it definitely made running a little harder. However, I pushed through and ran the last 1 mile and change pretty fast.

My evaluation:

• Very happy with my performance – enjoyed my new running style and kept digging through the pain I started to feel in my legs
• Would like to figure out the balance between drinking a lot of water before the race starts and peeing. Would love to do these races without having to stop in the first 2-3 miles
• Wear sunglasses if it’s sunny – last 4.5 miles directly into the sun was a little brutal
• Want to work on my stride so I glide more horizontally. I am happy with the improvements, but if I want to get south of 7 minute miles for a full marathon, I want to glide more and I have some things to work on. Videos my dad took on his bike can been seen here and you can see that I’m gliding somewhat, but not nearly as much as the guys who are doing those 5:30 /minute miles. Maybe one day…
• I love racing. Feels so good to be around a community of runners.

Hope everyone had a good race today! For more views of today’s race, see below. If you have questions or comments, I’m available as usual to talk with you! Have a great rest of the weekend!

Videos

Pictures