The day started off well, we woke around 5:00 am after falling asleep at 9:30. I had a good breakfast, whole wheat bread with marmalade, banana, glass of orange juice and a small cup of coffee, my usual pre-marathon meal.
When we boarded the bus for the start line I was feeling very confident that I could run somewhere between 3:20 and 3:30. My training had been good and I felt everything pointed to a good run. The weather wasn't quite perfect, a little warmer than ideal, low 60's at the start and feeling considerably warmer when the sun popped out of the clouds. The west wind was blowing at 10-15mph but wasn't much of a factor.
When the horn sounded to start the race I placed myself with the 3:20 pace group. It was a beautiful start as we headed south along the scenic Highway 61 with Lake Superior on our left.
The guy leading the group was the same person who led this pace group at the Twin Cities marathon and the first couple of miles where very similar. Mile one was a few seconds slow but then he ran hard to make them all up in the second mile. By the third mile I knew I wasn't going to have a good day.
Entering into the water station at mile three I grabbed a water and a Powerade and downed them both. My quads were already starting to burn and I couldn't figure out why but I immediately decided that I would walk through the remaining aid stations to try and keep my legs as fresh as possible. I quickly lost touch with the 3:20 pace group and came through the 10k in 47:39. By the half way point I was being caught by the 3:30 pace group as I struggled to a 1:44:45 split for the half. I was feeling terrible, everything hurt.
The next seven miles took 1:04 to run, although "run" may not be the right term for what I was doing. When I reached mile 20 in 2:48:21 my new goal was to get to the finish and if lucky break four hours. The run into Duluth was fantastic, great crowd support and a welcome change of scenery. I felt energized but my legs simply refused to respond. At mile 22 I arrived at Lemon Drop hill and enjoyed the climb followed by the downhill run into downtown Duluth.
Miles 20-25 took 53 minutes to run!
With 1.2 to go I decided to speed things up and finish strong. So I gave it all I had and ran the last 1.2 in 12 minutes, a blistering 10 minute/mile pace!
It was just one of those days. I have no explanation for it, 25 minutes worse than I'd hoped for, I just gutted it out as best as I could to the end. If there was any mistake in training it might have been that I didn't do enough long tempo runs but that doesn't explain everything going wrong at mile 3.
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