My first marathon. Official gun time of 4 hours, 44 minutes, and 47 seconds. Chip time (start to end of race rather than start of gun to end of race) of 4 hours, 41 minutes, and 49 seconds. Mile pace of 10 minutes and 45 seconds (based on gun time). 59/76 for my age division (males 20-24), 1899/2871 for the entire race. Official results here: BSIM results.

Lop off 2-3 minutes between the gun and actually getting to the starting line (long staged line based on predicted finishing time) and a 5 minutes porta potty wait and I have somewhere in the low 40's/high 30's but that's just an excuse to feel better about my time. Even at the full 4:44:47, I achieved my goal of running the marathon in under 5 hours. Not only that, I managed to keep pace per mile to below 11 minutes!

Met some nice people on the course too. Jim and Danny from LA also placed themselve into the 4:30-5:00 category though they ran much faster than I did. We all kept a similar pace for the first 8 miles, after which my porta potty stop separated us. Somewhere during Hurrican Point (a 2 mile long 4.5% grade up hill section from mile 10-12), I met a guy named Chris who ended up pacing about the same as I did. We were running within a couple hundered feet of each other for the most part and ended up with official times 4 seconds apart. Great to have a guy to pace yourself against.

The hills were really brutal. Couting Hurriance Point, I think the official tally is 5 hills in the first 13 miles and then 13 hills in the last 13 miles. I felt like I was always climbing one hill or another. Mile 20 and beyond was hard for me too. I slowed down from a 4:30 predicted finish to a 4:38 predicted finish and by mile 23, I could barely run half a mile without having to stop a bit. On the other hand, there was almost no head wind and it was fairly cool and cloudy for most of the run. Very nice conditions.

Accomplishments:

• Ran a fairly hard marathon in under 11 minutes/mile.
• Ran one on not enough training, lurking ITBS in my left knee (hurts now post-run) and slightly sore quads from a workout on Thursday.
• Ran a 20-mile run and a 26.2 mile run on consecutive weekends.
• Lived to tell the tale

Failures:

• Not enough training.
• Did not beat Oprah. (Though I'm convinced that I would have gotten close on a flat course)

Following Albert, here's my training schedule:

| week(of) |sun  mon  tue  wed  thr  fri  sat  | total |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 1 (1/9)  | x    x   3.3  4.5  3.5   x   6.9  |  18.2 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 2 (1/16) | x    x   3.4  5.4   x    x   10.2 |  19.0 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 3 (1/23) | x    x   3.4  5.4   x    x   6.8  |  15.6 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 4 (1/30) | x    x   3.4  6.2  2.4   x   12.3 |  24.3 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 5 (2/6)  | x   calf calf calf calf calf calf |   0   |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 6 (2/13) | x   sick sick sick sick sick sick |   0   |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 7 (2/20) | x    x   2.0  6.8   x    x    x   |  8.8  |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 8 (2/27) |13.5  x    x    x    x    x    x   |  13.5 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 9 (3/6)  | 16   x    x    x    x    x    x   |   ?   |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 10(3/13) | x    x    x    x    x    x    x   |   ?   |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 11(3/20) | x    x    x    x   3.4   x    x   |  3.4  |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 12(3/27) |5.8  3.4  12   ITBS ITBS ITBS ITBS |  21.2 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 13(4/3)  |ITBS ITBS ITBS ITBS  6   6.5   x   |  12.5 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 14(4/10) | x    12   x    x    3.5  x    x   |  15.5 |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 15(4/17) | 20   x    x    x    x    x    x   |  20   |
+----------+-----------------------------------+-------+
| 16(4/24) |26.2!rest!rest!rest!rest!rest!rest!|  26.2 |
+----------------------------------------------+-------+
                             |Cumulative Total:|  198.2|
                             ------------------+-------+

Key:
 +--------------------------------+
 |x = no running                  |
 |calf = left calf on the fritz   |
 |sick = cough cough cough        |
 |ITBS = Iliotibial Band Syndrome |
 +--------------------------------+

Lots of thing got in the way and like Albert, I wasn't terrifically rigorous. The last two week substituted for what was supposed to be weeks and weeks of gradual increasing of mileage from 12-20.

And like I said before, I'm going to continue running. I won't attempt a full marathon for a while, not until I've had more real training. But there's a half-marathon in Santa Barbara in November that I plan on going to, and I will qualify for the Boston eventually.

Special thanks goes to Anita for driving me up to and then back down from Moneterey. Not only that, but getting up at 3:20AM with me to drive me to the bus pick-up point for the race. And also Albert for running his marathon, thus inspiring me to do the Big Sur.