I ran in the Utah Valley Marathon.\u00a0\u00a0 At the last minute I entered this marathon, feeling that I had recovered enough from a good finish at the tough Squaw Peak 50-miler just a week ago.\u00a0 I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how I can do.\u00a0 Besides, all the trails were soaked from all the rain this week and a nice road run down Provo Canyon would make sense.\u00a0\u00a0 It would also be a nice last long run before Big Horn 100 on Friday.<\/p>\n
I ran in this Marathon last year in its first year.\u00a0 This year, it looked like it had 10 times the number of entrants (about 800 or so) and now is becoming a new major marathon in Utah.\u00a0\u00a0 The course started way up Provo Canyon, near the dam at Deer Creek Reservoir.\u00a0\u00a0 The right lane of the highway was blocked off all the way down the canyon for the course.\u00a0\u00a0 Then it went on some city roads and eventually joined up with the Provo River Parkway, a paved trail the follows the beautiful Provo River all the way to Utah Lake.\u00a0 From there it went through a maze of neighborhood roads for six more miles and ended up at the South Town Mall at the south end of Provo.<\/p>\n
The first half of the marathon is fast because of all the downhill, but the second half is pretty tough and slow because of all the twists, turns, ups and downs as it passed under major roads.\u00a0 I think this marathon is 5-10 minutes slower for me than the Ogden Marathon which is mostly a straight shot down the canyon.<\/p>\n
Busses took us up the canyon to the start and I tried to keep warm near the barrel fires as everyone arrived.\u00a0 I was able to meet several fastrunningblog bloggers including Tarzan and Smooth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
My goal for this race was to come out uninjured, and treat it like a training run.\u00a0 I expected that I could finish at least in 3:45.\u00a0 But I knew that once the competitive juices flowed, that I would probably press it harder, especially with the initial huge downhill over the first ten miles.\u00a0 Caution would be essential.<\/p>\n
The gun went off and away we went.\u00a0 Sure enough, I went out with the top-30 runners.\u00a0 The first mile was a gentle uphill which wasn\u2019t too bad because our legs were fresh, but then the nice downhill came and I kicked it into gear, passing several runners.\u00a0\u00a0 I struggled for the first few miles because I just wasn\u2019t warmed up yet.\u00a0\u00a0 The sore ankle behaved itself.\u00a0 I really only felt it when the road sloped to the right.\u00a0 My splits for the first six miles were:\u00a0 6:57, 6:32, 6:48, 7:25, 7:26, and 6:56.\u00a0 I think the only major hill was at mile 5 and I concentrated on pushing the pace on that.<\/p>\n
But by mile six, my calves were complaining.\u00a0 This always happens in marathons.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to risk a muscle pull so I backed off the pace.\u00a0 I had finally warmed up and the quads were saying, \u201cfaster, faster!\u201d\u00a0 But the calves were say, \u201cwhoa, Nelly!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 By changing my foot placements I could change the pressure on the calves and that seemed to help keep them lose.<\/p>\n
My next four miles splits down the Canyon were 7:20, 7:38, 7:38, and 7:48.\u00a0 Small groups of runners started to pass me.\u00a0 The course then went by the River Bottoms on a road behind some huge houses.\u00a0 My splits for miles 11-13, were: 7:57, 7:59, and 7:57, pretty consistent.\u00a0 I was bummed out that I couldn\u2019t keep a 7:30 going.\u00a0 I had the strength but the calves didn\u2019t want to do that.\u00a0\u00a0 The right calf really started to get tight, so I finally quickly took two Succeed! Caps (electrolytes) and within two miles it felt much better.\u00a0 I could not feel any bad effects from running Squaw Peak 50 a week ago.\u00a0 My half-marathon split was 1:37:02, not bad for me.<\/p>\n
Elite injured runner, Michelle Lowry was out on the course cheering us on.\u00a0 I recognized her by her crutches on the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 She yelled great words of encouragement to me both times I saw her.\u00a0 I sure hope the doctors can finally figure things out to get her healed.<\/p>\n
The course then made some weird gyrations near University Parkway, going back and forth and around a shopping center.\u00a0 It finally joined up with the Provo River Parkway.\u00a0\u00a0 I did fine at first but once the trail started to dip below roads I started to struggle.\u00a0 There were two other runners near me, one in orange and one in red.\u00a0\u00a0 They were both starting to use walking spells and then run at about a 7:15 pace.\u00a0\u00a0 I kept my steady pace going and would almost catch up, but then they would run ahead.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually I passed them for good as their walking spells increased.\u00a0\u00a0 My splits for miles 14-16 were: 7:36, 7:42, and 8:02.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I had my first split over 8 minutes. Around mile 16, the wheels started to come off my race.\u00a0 I could start feeling the effects of Squaw Peak 50.\u00a0 It became a significant struggle to keep my pace going.\u00a0 I took gels and that helped a little.\u00a0\u00a0 My splits for the rest of the Parkway by the river (miles 17-20) were:\u00a0 8:13, 8:54, 9:00, and 9:10.<\/p>\n
We now were dumped out onto roads near Utah Lake.\u00a0 Before the race, I wisely drove this section of the course so there would be no surprises.\u00a0 This was a good mental strategy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The final six miles were a terrible struggle.\u00a0 The gas tank was just running on empty even though I took gels which came back up and out a couple times.\u00a0 My hips started to hurt badly from last week.\u00a0\u00a0 I was just hanging on for dear life.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to croak.\u00a0 At that point I hear sirens.\u00a0 \u201cGreat, they are coming for me.\u201d\u00a0 I looked at the clock and knew a PR (sub 3:24) was out of the question, and soon a sub 3:30 was not likely.\u00a0\u00a0 I set my sights to at least break 3:35, which would be another Boston Qualifier time for me.\u00a0 My final splits, miles 21-26 were:\u00a0 8:55, 9:24, 9:26, 9:25, 9:25, and 10:14.\u00a0 I believe I saw fellow ultrarunner Leon Deitlaf pass me in the last mile or two.\u00a0 I just couldn\u2019t keep up. Dang, I just can\u2019t beat him in marathons.\u00a0 So close this time.<\/p>\n
I finished in 3:33:11, in 58th place, 7th in my age group.\u00a0 Our age group was pretty bunched up, five ahead of me finished within nine minutes before me.\u00a0\u00a0 Recovery was rough.\u00a0 I really gave it all I got without injuring myself.\u00a0 For the next 15 minutes I had to lie on the grass to find my strength again.\u00a0\u00a0 It came back and I enjoyed watching finishers for the next hour.\u00a0\u00a0 My 4th road marathon was in the books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I ran in the Utah Valley Marathon.\u00a0\u00a0 At the last minute I entered this marathon, feeling that I had recovered enough from a good finish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-50k-races-and-marathons"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.crockettclan.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}