Conquering St. George…
Someday I will finish reminiscing about Disneyland.
Today I shall discuss my 5th marathon!
I went into St. George saying I had no real set goals.I didn’t feel like I had done my best training. However, I have been feeling really good ever sinceI have been able to get my thyroid levels back in normal range. So, I had to have some sort of goal. I actually had about 3 different ones.
- Finish under 4 hours.
- If I felt good, go under 3:50
- If I felt super dang awesome, beat my PR of 3:44
My race strategy really wasn’t much of a strategy. Take it sorta easy on the first half,so that I can run the 2nd half faster and end feeling strong-ish.
I don’t have any pictures from before or during the race yet,so I will try to keep it short here.
The stars all aligned for me at this race. The weather was great.I slept for 5.5 hours the night before.(pretty good, for me!)I stuck with my “strategy”.
I felt awesome pretty much the whole time. Never hit a wall, except a bit around mile 24-but that was when the spectators were out cheeringso I couldn’t disappoint them all by walking, right? 😉 (big shout out to the cute girls handing out popsicles at mile 24- just what I needed!)I did a good job fueling at the right times. All things worked out. My 5th marathon was conquered!
Conquered much better than I expected, too!
Oh yes, that’s a 7 minute PR!I was amazed and so happy. I had dreams of getting under 3:40 at some point in my life, but didn’t even consider it a possibility for any race anytime soon. So yeah, I’m proud of how I raced this marathon.
I called the husband almost immediately after – I may have shed tears for the first time ever after a race. (for myself, at least- I always cry watching others cross the finish line)
No, I did not run in flip-flops.(I always put flip-flops in my drop bag so I can get my running shoes off ASAP)
I really, really loved this race!It has some good uphill, lots of downhill, amazing aid stations,is incredibly well organized and the finisher’s medal is beautiful! Also, the post-race refreshments are wonderful.
AND I was recognized by a blog reader for the first time!I stalk her blog, too and knew she was running this racebut I am terrible at recognizing people.
Here I am with the cutest Jessica from Journey to the Land of Skinny!
I am so, so happy that she came up and said hi!She did amazing and got her PR!
See- everything just came together to make this a fabulous day for me.
Thank you, St. George marathon!I will see you next year!
___________________________________________________________Side Note: I had a revelation as I stood at the start line when the gun went off.(not a spectacular revelation- just one that had never occurred to me before)I had to use the bathroom again (that wasn’t the revelation).I thought I would run as far as I could and go when I couldn’t wait anymore.I looked over at the port-o-potties and watched all the runnershurrying to the corrals because the race had started.I waited for a minute or 2…and then went to the bathroom when there was a line of one person.It was perfect.Plus, I didn’t add any extra minutes to my race time.Why have I never done this before??