Where to start. The last six months of training have been so sporadic, painful, annoying and mentally draining, not knowing from one day to the next if I would be able to run 1 mile or 23 without straining, pulling, or aggravating existing sore muscles, tendons, or various other body parts. And to finally have the body work properly for a day for the race to come together the way it did, I am very grateful and happy with the results from less than half the training I wanted. I am very grateful for all my daily training partners, Scott, Matt, Reed, Brandon, and a lot of other guys that have joined us, and I think we are all grateful to Chris who brought us all together (hope his achilles gets better this year so he can rejoin us), or us joined them through the year, Fritz, Jake, Justin, Toni, and many others who have inspired and made the many miles go by quickly. Wes for running trails with me whenever possible (far too few this summer), and for all of them putting up with my incessant whining about my hip, pelvis and leg which has refused to work properly on almost any run for many months, and I have been grateful on those days when things felt good that I could almost keep up with them for a mile or two on a run before things fell apart again. I have had some good sleep and not enough taper running this week. Nothing like a melatonin and a half a tylenol PM to help get some good sleep the week of a race. As early as Monday I wasn't sure I would be able to run this week, at least not without 26 miles of pain due to the right hip being physically stuck forward an inch or two restraining everything in the hip/pelvis. But thanks to the first chiro of the week to shove that back where it belongs so those muscles/tendons could get mostly recovered by Saturday. And his son, my Friday chiro to fine tune the sacrum into staying where it belongs and feeling great going into the race. Fell asleep fairly early Friday night and woke up at 2 something, couldn't get back to sleep so decided to get up and just get ready to go. Ate some gluten free rice crispies with chocolate milk, apple, banana, and right before the race started a honey stinger waffle. I forgot to take my first two electrolyte pills before I got rid of the clothes bag, which I hoped I wouldn't regret, good thing the temps cooperated today. I hit one of the first buses around 4 and met Bill Thresher who also runs with us on some mornings and rode the bus up with him. When we got there the flags were all standing straight out, and fortunately straight back the way we came. The possibility of a tail wind sounds so much better than the UV headwind nightmare of June. We were the first to arrive at the elite corral and had to chase some guys down to play fire starter, which I'm sure most guys would love the job of just burning things with torches and kerosene. Soon all my friends running the race began to arrive, and it was nice to see everyone feeling so good and having all the miles we have shared come together on a great race day. I had hoped to try pushing for a sub 2:40 again at this race knowing that the likelyhood of me hitting that was pretty much non existent, but seeing how close I am for the push for Boston seemed like a good idea. I knew that Brandon and Reed were planning on trying for this as well and knew Brandon would mostly likely hit it as strong as he has been running lately. We had lost Brandon until about 30 seconds before the race started, we got our little group together and then the race started. The temps were great, just cold enough to need gloves for a few miles. We went out conservative the first couple of miles trying out something Brandon had read, which I hear may have come from some article he was pointed to by Jake, about easing in the first couple of miles to set your body to burn glycogen slower for the entire race vs. going out fast and revving the motor up to redline to begin with. I liked how this felt through the race and seemed to work great. I had good energy through 23-24 miles. Reed, Brandon and I hung out cruising through the first 7 miles until we hit Veyo. My right hamstring has been tight/sore all week, and a couple of muscles attached to the lesser trochanter, upper inner right thigh, groin muscles, have been a little strained due to jacked up pelvis, and the first 7 miles those muscles attached to the top of my leg would occasionally tighten up, not contract properly, felt like they went into slow motion for a step or two, then they would work okay. It was an odd feeling. This eventually either went away, or I stopped noticing it, and the hammy eventually started bothering me too. We hit Veyo and Brandon put the hammer down and disappeared off into the distance. I hung out with Reed for a bunch of more miles as the race continued on. We hit 13 at 1:21, which is about where we wanted to be at, and at some point I started feeling good, and I gapped Reed a little bit. Then I started in like a 16 mile leap frog of Toni, as he would feel good and blow by me, gain a couple hundred yards, then cramp up or have stomach pains or something and slow down or stop for a minute when I would catch up and pass him, then soon he would come blowing by me again, we did this all the way to the last mile. It was nice to hit the downhill sections toward the end of the race and fee like I could maintain a decent pace. Considering the lack of base I have been able to maintain, the non-stop pain and injuries of the last six months and the very few fast/tempo miles I have been able to do, I am very pleased to have been able to break my PR from last year. I wore my heart rate monitor but hardly ever looked at it and just went by feel most of the race. Very grateful the hips held together the whole race and nothing was getting worse, which is a good sign. Left leg completely locked up during the post race massage, which is never a pleasant experience, must have really been drained of minerals, which I wish I would have remembered to take before the race started. Looking forward to six months of healthy training for Boston and many more great runs with great people everyday. 1 6:27 2 6:32 3 6:12 171 4 6:04 166 5 6:05 163 6 5:52 158 7 5:47 166 8 6:46 164 9 6:31 165 10 6:19 164 11 6:36 166 12 6:24 164 13 6:03 167 14 6:02 169 15 5:49 169 16 5:38 166 17 5:58 167 18 6:13 163 19 6:44 163 20 6:20 162 21 6:04 160 22 6:37 160 23 6:32 156 24 6:25 158 25 6:59 156 26 6:59 157 .23 1:23 166 | 