Journey from 238.5 lbs to 2:38:30

This was my 2nd year of running marathon's and 2nd St. George Marathon.  The last few weeks since the Nebo half were not ideal at all leading up to this race and may have contributed to my kind of falling apart the last 4 miles.  It took 2 weeks for the quads to work properly after Nebo, so I wasn't running alot, other than pacing Top of Utah at 3:20, trying to do just maintenance miles while trying not to re-aggravate the quads, also dealing with a cold that moved into the lungs the week before the race.  I got my normal taper miles in the week of, so that was good, and started to feel pretty decent leading up to the race.  

 We ended up on a very late, very crammed bus and I barely had time to wait in the portopotty line and get out and in the chute before the race started.  No time for warm up.  And man was it warm at the start.  I could tell it was going to be a scorcher.  

 The goals for this race were, finished under 2:50, possibly run 2:45, feel like I raced the whole way.  I was sort of paying attention to my heart rate this race, I felt like I could maintain around a 170 bpm and still finish okay, and that seemed to work out for most of the race.  I think the final 8-9 miles I was just in survive the heat mode.  I started dumping water on me at the first aid station and continued throughout the race.  No matter how much water I dumped on me it would be evaporated within the next mile and would be back to too hot the mile after that.  The legs felt good, though somewhat tired, and just low energy those last 8 miles.   

 Will finish this later

Lindon miles

Trail 51

South on JRT

Timp park to rock pile, circle around 51-33 down cliff trail

I paced the Pink series Half Marathon in Park City.  It was a great experience, and we were all expecting there to be a few women who were faster than the pace I was running, but it turned out that the woman who won ran exactly my pace for the whole race.  It was her first victory, it was a great experience to see someone so grateful/happy to win her first race.  

Trail 51, some gwt

I was heading out to run the timp trail half marathon course today and see if I could beat my time from 1.5 years ago.  I was feeling great through mile 5 and had a bit of a lead off of my previous pace, but started having achilles pain/calf pain, so had to shut it down at mile 5 and head back to the start.  Looking forward to doing this run again, just the whole thing.  I'd like to see if I could beat Kevin Tuck's time from 2010.

Ran around the G mountain with Wes.  Absolutely stunning up there this time of year.

Ran from soldier hollow to Bridal Veil with Scott, Chris, Brody and Melanie.  Was wearing a new pair of shoes, for the 2nd time, and they ended up having a string dangling under my foot with a ball of string on the end and it tore a huge hole in the bottom of my foot.   This took a couple of weeks to fully get better, though I was able to run on it a little.   Was a great run, other than the patch of skin getting larger and larger and sliding around, making every step more and more painful.

Ran Big Springs.  Another incredible scenic run.  Could spend all day running around these trails.

Did some speed work with Chris and Scott, and someone else, been too long.  Foot still having issues.  

A kid in our neighborhood was doing a food drive/eagle scout project 5k.  I entered and won.  Braden Smith ran with me the first two miles, he just ran in the state high school meet a few days before this, and I hadn't ever ran against him while he was in shape.  After mile 2 I slowly pulled ahead of him until the finish.  The new flesh cracked next to the large old callus and caused some new pain.  

Noon run in Lindon

Ran the 10k course with Wes

Ran in Cedar Hills with Scott, Brody and Melanie.  Love the winter freezing headwind out of AF canyon.

This is the fourth time I have raced this course, well, 2nd at this distance, they moved the starting line up a bit so the 5k is closer to a 5k and the 10k is just under 6.  But at least it is a consistent length now so I can compare times.

 Leading up to this race I messed  up my back Thursday night, so Friday morning I was pretty crooked and wasn't sure I'd be able to run at all.  My normal chiropractor isn't in town on Friday's so I ended up going to a chiropractor who had been setup at the end of a race last year.  He was able to straigten me up enough so I could run Saturday morning.  I was pretty concerned that the downhill would really throw my back into a mess if it wasn't working properly at that point.  

 I went for some warmup to see if the back, hips and legs would seem to be working for me, and after a few minutes of jogging around they seemed like they would work okay.  So I had hope that I would be able to keep my top 3 streak alive.   I didn't see anyone I recognized running the 10k that I was overly concerned about.  Clark Nielson was running the 5k this year, he won the 10k last October.  My cousin's high school kid Paxton is very fast, he ended up winning the 5k.  As usual the first 2 miles I trail a pack of people and am never sure how many of them are running the 10k until they head back up 400 North.  My friend Toni ran with me the first 3 miles.  As the runner's split Toni and I had just one runner ahead of us by about 40 yards.  I started to surge for a few seconds at a time and slowly caught back up by around the 3 mile mark.  That's when the 4th mile of the course starts heading back uphill from Geneva back to Orem.  I put on some distance on Toni and the guy who had been in front on those hills and was able to maintain the lead until the finish.  The run down the side road at 800 north is always a treat.  There is no straight path down that road, so you have to zig zag over curbs, around islands, sometimes jumping over tall curbs, always a treat to make it through that section without tripping over something or twisting an ankle over the odd terrain.  I was feeling a little oxygen deprived the last mile but strong enough to keep pushing to the finish.  It was awesome to drop around 24 seconds off my time from January, as well as getting my first 1st overall at this race. 

My splits were 

5:41     186 bpm

5:34     187 bpm

5:49     175 bpm

6:13     176

6:25     179

6:01      181

 The watch shows a 346 foot descent and climb.

My first mile was 3 seconds slower than January, the 2nd was the same and the rest were a little bit faster. 

Ran BST to 51 loop with Wes.  Trails were awesome.