I'm a marathon finisher... again.

So yesterday was the big day; The 2009 Salt Lake City Marathon. I hardly slept the night before. We went down to Martha's mom's house for the night and it was her birthday. We went to a Japanese restaurant where they cook in front of you. I had some fried noodles amongst other things (so much for spaghetti). It was pretty good.

I got up at 5 to get ready and head to the Gateway mall. From there I took trax to the University of Utah where the race began. I sat next to a cool 60 year-old guy on the way who was doing the half marathon. The starting area was not very well organized and I had to scramble to find a place to put my extra gear. I finally did about 5 minutes before the start. I had to squeeze through a gate to get
to the start line. I ended up starting about 20 seconds after the gun. They used chip time and luckily they gave us our timing chips the night before. We got started and a turned on my zune. I didn't want to go out too fast so I tried to relax and I listened to "Easy" by Lionel Ritchie. It relaxed me pretty well. Apparently it was too well and I ended up going a bit faster than planned. I kept trying to slow down a little but I wasn't slowing down as much as I wanted. I wanted to run between 7:30 and 8:00 per mile. Here are my splits according to my watch

1. 6:47
2. 6:46
3. 6.35
4. --:--
   
5. 13:50 (4+5)
6. 7:22
7. 7:47
8. 7:29
9. 7:53
10. 7:40
11. 7:10
12. 7:49
13. 7:46 (1st 13 miles in 1:35)
14. 7:22
15. 7:28
16. 7:51
17. 7:42
18. 8:16
19. 8:47
20. 8:52
21. 9:13
22. 9:08
23. 9:24
24. 9:35
25. 10:27
26. 11:17 (this was 1.2 miles)

My total time was 3:30:29 (the clock in the picture is different because I took about 20 seconds to pass the start line and start my time.

As you can tell I pretty much hit the wall between mile 18 and 19. I took about 20 minutes longer to do the second 13 miles than I did to do the first 13. I did a lot of things that weren't the smartest. I started way too fast and as a result walked way way way more than I planned. I also did not like how the aid stations were set up. They were not at mile markers. They were at seemingly random points and it made it hard for me to time when to take a gel because I didn't know when the next water would be available. The info said that 2 stations would have gel and I only found 1. Luckily I brought 2 gels with me. I didn't like the gel they provided because it was too thick. So I only got as many gels in 26.2 miles as I took during a 20 mile training run and started too fast.

The other big mistake I made was my shirt. I wore a cotton/polyester blend thinking I would be warm enough but that it would wick away excess sweat. I forgot to consider what happens when you combine sweaty man-boobs, cold moisture, and constant rubbing for 3 and a half hours. The end result is bloody nipples. Luckily, I didn't notice this problem until the end.

All in all, I think I am ok with my time but I would have rather gotten it or improved on it by not starting off to fast and knowing what to expect and what not to expect from aid stations, both of which contributed to my walking way more than planned. Oh well. Maybe next time I'll be better prepared to avoid these pitfalls.

As for the results, I got 120th overall out of 1067 finishers in the marathon. I got 20th out of 106 in my age division. I got 103rd out of 685 men finishers. So only 17 girls beat me. You can find more results info here.

If you want to see the official pics that I am too cheap to buy, check out this site.