Had a good race in Little Rock ...
started out by waking up 4:45 on interal alarm clock and hoped in the shower and was out before wake up call. had a nasty cup of in room coffee and decided to drop a few bucks and get some starbucks in the lobby. to my suprise they had free starbuck coffee and breakfast for the marathoners...i shot jake and scotty a quick text to let the know... i couldn't pass on a good cup coffee and otis spunkmire muffin.
Shortly after jake and I boarded the shuttle bus and had a lost bus driver.. he ended up dropping us off as close as he could and we walked in and found the elite staging area...Little Rock Marathon did a fine job of taking care of us and have to say that a lot of marathons could learn a thing or two from them.
team JB and scotty did warm-up with a little over a mile made a few pit stops and did a few strides and stretches before going all out race suit on.
My nerves weren't too bad i actually felt really relaxed at start. I had a master runner that seemed very intested in me and knowing more about me as we were staged before gun time.
Team JB lined up together and Scotty D on the other side with the dead coyote dudes, we took out at a very comfortable 5:15 pace and when we turned back to W. i could feel a small head wind. I could right away tell that i should get to a closer pace of what i felt i could run on that day Jake and some of the lead packers quickly went out of site... i kept the dead coyote dude in close site and seemed content up to 10k behind him.. after that other than a few wheel chairs i was running alone till about mile 10 where 2 really big dude blew by me and stayed about 4 secs infront of me till they took the marathon turn and i took off on the 1/2... sortly after the marathon course and 1/2 reconnected for about another 1.5 miles where i fell in right behind the lead marathon pack that had two kenyans and a white boy..i was between them and jake. i pretty much cruised in solo from this point on. giving a wave here and there to some spectators.... my garmin had me about .3 over which kinda confused me as to where the finish was gonna be.
connect.garmin.com/activity/280172504
Was pleased with my race - PRed offical time 1:14:13 but was about 31 secs off of the all time master record in AR. Pay out was 250 bones... feeling good about my training and lookin forward to some better races to come.
had a good massage right after race. then shuffled some easy miles out to see where jake and scotty d were and how they were doing. |