marathon pace run

Last week I was really excited to finally be running pain free. I ran every day last week without pain. 3 of my days were real quality workouts. a 10 miler, a 12 miler, and a 13 miler. I'm not at all happy about the 13 miler but looking back over things I think I should be kinder to myself...water off a ducks back. I went from a month of around 15 miles a week to getting in 58 miles. I had been doing only slow running for months before and did 3 quality workouts. I had been on antibiotics. I ate a bit poor and drank some beer. So I suppose some slack, and some perspective is deserved....so I'll drop it.

Over the weekend John, Mike, Zoya, and Mellisa were headed down to North Carolina for the weekend so I tagged along. They were there to race a marathon......Sunday came round and I went ahead and lined up. The marathon and 1/2 marathon went together so I just ran with the hot looking female leaders in the 1/2 marathon. I could see the marathon eventual winner pull away pretty quickly at around 6 pace. The 2nd and 3rd guys seemed to be running about 6:20. I just stayed with the "scenery" and ran the following. I felt like complete shit the entire time.

1) 6:28
2) 6:30
3) 6:36
4) 6:27
5) 6:28
6) 6:37
7) 6:46
8) 6:46
9) 6:51
10)6:45
11)6:44
12)6:41

After that I dropped out, went back to the house and got the car, waited for everyone to finish...and drove the limping cripples home :-)

It was a fun weekend with good friends. I got to lay on the beach and read 1/2 of my book. It was spring break so I got to be grandpa creeper on the beach looking at all the young women in bikinis. Everyone else ran pretty good. Well....except that Zoya had stomach trouble so her best miles included sprints to the porta john followed by 5 minute recovery...."sits". John did a long bike ride the day before and then just jogged the marathon as an Ironman workout. Mike ran after being injured and trudged out a 4:20. Melissa finished the 1/2 about 40 minutes faster than I imagined she would.