LOCATION: Sauvie Island, Portland, Oregon
This has become a tradition for me to run a marathon on the Fourth of July. Since the race is only about 25 miles from my house, it's a must do. In past years it has been a two loop marathon, this time they added two out and backs in order to avoid the second loop. The only problem with this is that it added a few hills that prevents it from being a "flat" marathon.
In the previous months I had been putting together the Maniacs newsle
tter. In doing so, I had befriended a Maniac in California, Sam Felsenfeld, who was running 60+ marathons in 2010 to raise awareness for autism. He was coming to Portland to do the Foot Traffic Flat. So wanting to meet him, I met him for dinner the night before. It was great to finally meet him and get a chance to talk about his mission.
My friend Jon and I drove out to Sauvie Island very early in the morning. The race started at 6:45 and the traffic getting on to the island is very bad, so you have to get there very early. We ended up getting there about 6am, I was hoping to get there about 5:45, but 6:00 ended up being fine. We had a chance to talk and meet other maniacs from out of state that came to do this marathon.
When the race started we ran together for about the first four miles before Jon took off. I was fine with that I wasn't looking for a real fast marathon, I was planning to run about a 3:40 marathon. I started out running 7:30-7:40 miles for the first four miles, before slowing down to about 7:45-8:00 miles for the ten miles. I felt pretty good and the weather was perfect. It was cool and cloudy, which isn't always the case on the Fourth of July. At the half way point I had run about a 1:41 first half. That seemed like it was a little too fast, so I slowed it down.
In the second half I continued to run in the 8:00 minutes per mile range for about another five miles. At about mile 18 I slowed to about a 8:20-8:30 pace for the rest of the race. I was feeling really good and decided to go for it. I quickly realized that I was going to break 3:40, and ended up finishing in 3:33:08.
After wards we stuck around for a little while longer to see some friends finish. The weather was nice and it ended up being a wonderful race. By the way, my friend Jon ran a PR with a time of 3:24.
This has become a tradition for me to run a marathon on the Fourth of July. Since the race is only about 25 miles from my house, it's a must do. In past years it has been a two loop marathon, this time they added two out and backs in order to avoid the second loop. The only problem with this is that it added a few hills that prevents it from being a "flat" marathon.
In the previous months I had been putting together the Maniacs newsle
tter. In doing so, I had befriended a Maniac in California, Sam Felsenfeld, who was running 60+ marathons in 2010 to raise awareness for autism. He was coming to Portland to do the Foot Traffic Flat. So wanting to meet him, I met him for dinner the night before. It was great to finally meet him and get a chance to talk about his mission.My friend Jon and I drove out to Sauvie Island very early in the morning. The race started at 6:45 and the traffic getting on to the island is very bad, so you have to get there very early. We ended up getting there about 6am, I was hoping to get there about 5:45, but 6:00 ended up being fine. We had a chance to talk and meet other maniacs from out of state that came to do this marathon.
When the race started we ran together for about the first four miles before Jon took off. I was fine with that I wasn't looking for a real fast marathon, I was planning to run about a 3:40 marathon. I started out running 7:30-7:40 miles for the first four miles, before slowing down to about 7:45-8:00 miles for the ten miles. I felt pretty good and the weather was perfect. It was cool and cloudy, which isn't always the case on the Fourth of July. At the half way point I had run about a 1:41 first half. That seemed like it was a little too fast, so I slowed it down.
In the second half I continued to run in the 8:00 minutes per mile range for about another five miles. At about mile 18 I slowed to about a 8:20-8:30 pace for the rest of the race. I was feeling really good and decided to go for it. I quickly realized that I was going to break 3:40, and ended up finishing in 3:33:08.
After wards we stuck around for a little while longer to see some friends finish. The weather was nice and it ended up being a wonderful race. By the way, my friend Jon ran a PR with a time of 3:24.
No comments:
Post a Comment