Cape Cod Marathon

     I woke up for this race to howling winds out the window, and I began to really regret my decision to run this race. I was just imagining running 26 miles into the wind for three hours and having it be horrible. I was happy once I got to the line to see everything had calmed down and the wind was still there but not as constant as it sounded the whole night before. It's always fun being on the line at a GP event, getting to say hi to my team mates, It's very energizing to be on the line with such a great bunch of runners, and looking at our guys you could tell we had a shot of being the top team for the day.
     The gun went off and I went out as planned with Abbey, trying to stay very easy. I felt like we were jogging and thought our first mile would be 7:20 or so but it was more like 6:40. here's my splits.
6:40
6:33
6:35
6:34
6:42
6:46
20:04 for miles 7,8,9
6:39
6:33
6:46
6:33
6:25
6:26
6:59
6:25
6:40
6:45
7:01
7:40
7:41
7:41
8:00
8:08
11:13 for the last 1.2!

finished up at 3:03:00 and I'm not that dissapointed with that, I couldn't expect to run an awesome time at this point in my training and so with a limited build up I'm happy with myself.

I was feeling great and running very comfortably with Abbey for the first 14, around that point though I got talking with the guy who ended up winning the Clam Chowdah Challenge and we clicked off a string of faster miles and I thought I was ready to start racing. I hit 20 miles at 2:13 right on 2:55 pace and then things started getting much more difficult and I made sure to take some extra water, and stopped to make sure I got all of my GU at the next water stop. Maybe this was a mistake, because things got much tougher from there on out. I was  falling off hard at this point.
I wish I'd just stuck with Abbey now though, because she slowed down a bit when I took off, and I ultimately slowed down a lot when I crashed later on. I may still have had a tough time in that last 10k so who knows. Fun race anyway though. I loved it, even those really hard miles were still a lot of fun. I was nearly delirious that last mile and talking to myself like an idiot. "That guy's running, why can't you run? C'mon legs what's wrong with you?" Fun stuff!

I have been thinking about the marathon non stop since I ran it though! I'm really looking forward to my next one although I certainly won't rush it. I probably won't run one again until next years GP race, but I'm looking forward to it and I think I'll be able to take a good amount of time off.

If anyone has any advice about the recovery period I am all ears. I'm planning 20, 30, 40 for the next few weeks then getting started with more milage, and work outs for indoor season. That sounds ok to everyone?