#46 - Capitol City Marathon 2008

DATE: May 18, 2008
LOCATION: Olympia, Washington

This is a marathon that has a lot of rolling hills that makes it a challenge. It's also a race where they are very strict about not wearing headphones. Which often pushes me along in races. So I knew I had some challenges to overcome. My goals were to run well. This is only my second marathon of the year. I'd been running a lot of ultras, but very few marathons. I knew I would break 4 hours, but was looking at the 3:35-3:50 range.

I started out fast and thought that it was going to cause me some problems later. But I figured I would just keep going and see how long it would last. By the half way point I was running about a 7:40 minutes per mile average, which was a PR pace. So I kept pushing but slowed down to 8 minute miles. I ended up finishing with a time of 3:28, which blew me away. It was so unexcited, this was my third fasted at that time.

By the way, on the way up on Saturday I blew out one of my tires. It was destroyed. I didn't know how to change a tire so I made my way to a gas station and they helped me put the spare on and I drove the rest stop and got a little sleep and then ran the race. On Sunday after the race I found that Sears was the only place open on Sunday for a new tire. It all worked out, but was quite an experience.