Marathon Complete!

• Way overdue for the final entry but I did manage to complete the marathon.
• I finished in 3:56, A little slower than my goal of 3:45 but I basically hit the 'wall' at mile 20 and it was just a mental push to complete the last 6 miles, where I dropped a minute per mile on my avg pace.
• I did win my Clydesdale category for guys weighing over 225 lbs.
• In conclusion I probably won't run another marathon anytime soon, but I'm definitely glad I ran one. I feel as a Cross Country and track runner growing up and in college it's one of those check mark goals to accomplish.  

Weeks 3-2 to go

• Did my longest run so far last week at 18 miles. I ran over and back of the new Tillicum bridge. I is a great big arch so it was literally up hill both ways. Still making the mistake of going out to fast and then really struggling the last couple of miles. I have been running with my Camel Pak for the last couple of week and that has helped a lot having enough water with me as I run. 
• The last two weeks I plan on tapering down and focusing on pace and healing all the over use nagging pains that I've developed over this past summer of training. 
• My marathon pace goal is going to be somewhere between 8:30-45 hopefully. 

Weeks 6-4 to go

• I haven't posted in awhile due to heavy travel/work/family/lazy schedule. I've kept up my pretty regular training runs of 2-3 runs of around 5 miles during the week and one long run on the week end. 
• My long runs after my half marathon have been 14, 15, and 16 miles. I going to probably end up not 'correctly' tapering off into the marathon 3 weeks to go to reach my 20 mile goal mark of running before the marathon. Next week I will do 17.5 then 20 the following week. That's about 10% increase a week so it is attainable. 
• A couple of comments I discovered on these longer runs I have been doing after my half marathon. 

1. Racing the half marathon well gave me a nice mental boost as to just running the marathon itself and it was awesome they had water every few miles available in cups for me!
2. Hydration is something I need to improve on. I did a test of weighing yourself before and after a run, I did so on my 16 miler this week. I dropped 5 pounds on the run. I talked to my marathon running counterpart and he said I need to get a hydration belt or something. I had been stopping at 2-3 water fountains during my long runs, but I'm realizing that's not cutting it. I am going to experiment with a Camel Pak I have and a water bottle in my hand on shorter runs first to see what I like best.  
3. Chaffing has become a real pain after the runs. I have been using a silicone roll on mostly but recently tried the classic body glide stick. Either way I think I'm going to have to give in and use band-aids on my nipples. I looked like Andy from The Office when I was done running. 

7 Weeks to go.

• I did a Half-Marathon practice race this past Saturday night. It was basically and out and back on the Springwater trail, heading East first then into the Sunset back towards the river after the turn around. It was nice and unique to run a race Saturday evening instead of the usual early Sunday morning race slot. 
• My goal was to keep on my marathon pace as much as possible. It's hard to fight that urge at the start of the race and take off like when you're a kid at school racing your friends. The race actually had 'pacers' for mile times that had signs and would be running the race too. I positioned my self between the 8:00 and 9:00 min per mile pacers. I quickly caught up to the 8:00 pacers and realized I was going to fast and outside of my goal. So i forced my self to slow down and I wouldn't let myself pass the 8;00 pacers. I actually drifted back a bit after a few miles. Then a bit after mile 4, I got caught at a stop light and had to wait for the cross walk signal. 
• Everything went pretty good, the race started to thin out after the the turn around point. I got past by with about 2 miles to go. So I decided to follow him in and pick up my pace a little. Then when I were about 1/2 mile out the old feeling of being in a race kicked in, so I kicked it in and sprinted to the finish. 
• I managed to place 7th for my division and 3rd for my age group. That was a great confidence boost for my training. Considering I treated most of this race as a tempo run and probably could have gone faster if this was my goal of a half-marathon. But as I know I have to run twice this in 7 weeks.   

8 weeks to go.

• This is the most total miles I've ran in one week so far. 24 miles for the week. It was actually a pretty tough week running. Because of my long run last Sunday and my travel schedule I ended up running 4 out of 5 days and then took Friday and Saturday off. My 'rest day' ended up being 18 holes of golf that I walked and Saturday hiking up dunes and chasing my kids around the beach at Pacific City.
• I had a 12 mile run planned this morning where I would just add run one more bridge further, this case the Morrison, to my run from last week. So apparently the bridge pedal was this morning so I had to compete with the above picture on my run this week. Actually it wasn't that bad. The only couple of times it got inconvenient. Crossing the Sellwood bridge a lot of the bikers stopped to take pictures, so they stopped up on the sidewalk. I had to jump down off the sidewalk and run on the bridge with the bikers. I got a surprise look from the guy I was running next to on his bike. Then the other time was trying to get on the Morrison bridge, Natio was packed with every biker in Portland for 5 blocks. I ended up just cutting through the crowd of bikes. 
• In the end the run was tough and a bit slower than my 11 miles last week. I'm thinking about doing the Sunset Half next Saturday as a training run and 'race' practice for the marathon.  

9 Weeks To Go

• I had a nice long 11 mile run this week over a new course. I left my house in SE over the Sellwood bridge, ran along the west side of the river, crossed the Hawthorne, and back towards my house via Springwater trail. 
• This definitely broke up the loop I had been doing for the past 2 months on long runs. I was thinking that Sunday morning I would be one of the few people doing this run. Apparently it's one of the most popular runs in some form or another to run across the bridges in a loop. I past several of the same people going the opposite way as me. I came across one guy running across the Sellwood and then again on the Hawthorne. 
• I was pretty sore from the run the rest of the day and Monday. I did a cross training day Monday. Then I did 5 miles on the treadmill Tuesday. The hardest part was mentally doing 5 miles on the treadmill. 
• I'm going to try this weekend to run close to 12-13.1 miles and do the same bridge loop but by going one more bridge to the Morrison it will add a mile. 

10 weeks to go.

- This cooler weather was a great break from the unusual hot summer we've been having. Already some leaves have fell in my yard. It looks like a Septemember day. My 10 mile run actually felt easier than the 8 mile run last week in 80 degrees. 

- My friend in Denver reminded me we just have 10 weeks to go. I'm behind on my weekly mileage after my injured week I had. The new stretch I've added seems to be working. I'm looking at doing a local half marathon in a few weeks. Even thought I'm basically paying $50 for a training run. I've read that doing a half marathon race is good for working some kinks out of racing and mentally use to running with other people in a race too. 

- Unfortunately the hot weather is back by mid week.