Surfside Marathon - 4:47 or 4:48 or something

Hi America, how are you? You look good.

There was a big question mark going into this race as to when I would finish. I was looking back at my training log in the days before and it seemed the farthest I'd run since the Houston Marathon was 6.75 miles. Changos! I caught a cold a couple weeks ago and it severly interrupted the training I had planned for between marathons.

If you don't feel like reading and just want to know if your faster or slower than me, I'll tell you. I finished in 4:47 or 4:48, I think. Houston and San Antonio were under 4:30, and I thought maybe I could run something comparable today, but the sand and the wind slowed me down. In truth, I feel like this was a better race for me than either of those two. I was tired, but aside from a few walks through some of the water stations to drink and to gel-up, I ran the whole way to the finish. Both Houston and San Antonio (and of course Sunmart), the wheels came off near the end, and I had many unplanned stoppages, just because it was hurting too much.

Anyway, I want to back up and tell you about my carbo-loading day too, because it was very nice. We went to Maggiano's Little Italy, since I had a Chili's giftcard, and Maggiano's honors them too. I had the biggest cube of lasagne ever created. Plus there was a bowl of broccoli asiago soup which was excellent, and a creme brulee too. It seems I've finally learned the capacity of my stomach (it's 6" x 6" x 6" + 250mL + a creme brulee).

There were a lot of familiar faces at this race, including Susan, Rick, Liane, Hugh, Vicky, Kevin, Tamsin, and Omar from the CLFC. Not to mention Barbara, Edwin, June, and Jamoosh from the HRB. There was even a professor from my school there running the half. Incidently, did you know that Susan from CLFC is totally amazing? She ran the RR100 miler last weekend to finish her Texas Trilogy and ran the marathon today as a recovery run. You should check out her race report from last weeks 100 miler, she PR'd, despite being almost completely blind by the end of the race, due to an electrolyte imbalance.

Where was I? Ah yes.
It was a little cold and a little windy, but I think not as windy as last year, and the sand wasn't blowing like it was last year either. I was prepared for the worst and brought 5 gels with me in case I was having a rough day. I felt better than expected and postponed the first gel until after 16 miles, after the turnaround to head back to Stalman Park. The turnaround to run with the wind for the last 10 miles made a huge difference, and I'm sure my pace in that part was faster than fighting the wind. I don't know my splits since I forgot my watch again. And this time, it left me totally in the dark, since nobody was calling out the times, except for one guy at the south turnaround, and that didn't really help because I didn't know the distance. But it's funny, since three of the five marathons I've run for the TMC, I've forgotten my watch. By the time I was ready to finish this morning, I thought the time could be anywhere between 4:30 and 5:00.

But as I mentioned, I'm pretty happy with my time, and even though it's my second slowest marathon, I feel like it was my second best marathon effort, behind my run with Dean in October.

Right now, I'm ready for some downtime, and I'll probably take a week off from runnizzing, and probably 5 or 6 months off from racing. But I'm already looking forward to getting back to training. December, or January, I'll see if I can't break four hours.

Anyway, thanks for reading.
Love, Keith.