Pioneer Spirit “Marathon”
In one word, WOW. What an experience. I ran my race. Didn’t start too fast and paced myself nicely. The race started pretty good. There were about 30 people or so….not too crazy. We started at No Hands Bridge. It’s a beautiful place. By the end of the bridge I feel like everyone had kinda fallen into thier positions.
There were two guys who took off. They looked fast. I fell into the next group and, to be honest, I was surprised and thought I was going too fast. The watch said I was holding a 8:15 pace which is probably a bit too fast but everyone always starts a bit fast. We were flat at this point so I figured I might be able to hang here. I was in 7th spot. Two ladies took 3rd and 4th, then a guy and another lady with me following them. We all stayed tight for a few miles.
Around mile 4 or 5 the lady in 6th dropped off and around mile 6 the guy dropped off. I actually started to lead the pack around mile 5 and held that until about mile 7 when my vest came undone. I took a moment to stop and fix it and the two girls caught me. Side note: I almost ate it hard at mile 5.5. My hand was inches from the ground and somehow I caught myself.
At about mile 9 or so we hit the second aide station and I didn’t stop. I think the other two ladies did and I moved into 3rd spot. I made my way down the Auburn hills to the river. I felt strong and kept a good pace. At around mile 10 the first 50 mile racer passed me, another at 10.5 and finally Tim Tollefson at mile 12. Those dudes are so fast. They passed and then were gone. Spoiler alert, somehow Tim caught those guys and won by what I think is a sizable margin. Incredible. Congratulations Tim!
At the mile 15.5 aide station I was on my way out, had a quick bottle fill, when the two ladies were coming in. No joke, about a quarter or half a mile later one of them blew by me. Another half mile the other blew by me. I was holding a steady pace I thought. These ladies had turned it up a notch and there was no way I was responding to that. I thought I was running a solid race and they blew my mind. Nice work ladies!
At about mile 18 I hit my first wall. It didn’t last too long. Maybe until mile 20 and then I felt good again. I hit another wall around mile 22 to 24 but got over that pretty quickly too. I will say that those first climbs stayed with me throughout the entire race. My quads hurt! Not sure if it was the gnarly downhills or the climbs but it was hard none the less.
Here was the kicker. I know the second part of the course like the back of my hand. Those are my stomping grounds. I had run the trails after mile 12. The race director mentioned before we started that we may be doing a bit more than a marathon becuase they had to change part of the course due to rain…..no biggie. However, at about mile 20 I knew we had a lot more than 6 miles to get to Beale’s Point. I wasn’t sure if they knew of some shortcut I was unaware of or not.
They did have us run on some trails that cut off some miles I had not run before but it wasn’t anything major. I finished 26.2 strong. At mile 27 I ran out of water and nutrition. I started to cramp decently bad. I was able to adjust my stride to hold of some of the lockups. I was concered that someone may catch me at this point if I had to slow down. Ultimately I pushed through and finished the race. It ended up being 29 miles. That is 5 miles more than I had ever run and 3 miles more than I was prepared for. At the end of the day I am glad it was. I started questioning if I could do the QS50k in May…..I think I got it.
Am I allowed to call myself an Ultra runner now? Probably not….
I was really excited to finish were I did. Results are 5th overall, 3rd place male and 2nd in my age group. Even with the slimmed down crowd it was a stretch for me to finish with these results. My stretch goal was a 4:30 marathon. I think I did it. My official time (for 29 miles) was 4:51 and some change.
I can’t end this without saying thank you to my coach, The Queen, Meghan Laws. I was thankful to finally meet her after the race. She has been amazing in setting up my training over the past few months and got me to a place where I could compete like I did today. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
