Big Cottonwood Marathon 2013…
Last weekend I completed marathon #7 of 2013!
13 total marathons since I started running 3 years ago.
I love marathons.
It’s my favorite distance.
I may have mentioned this before. However, I am feeling burned out.I don’t look forward to running between races.I knew that doing so many marathons in such a short time (7 in the past 5 months)would result in less than stellar times and SOME burnout.It’s been a little worse than I thought. So next year I will stick to just a few full marathons.
I did manage to get my best marathon time of 2013and my 2nd fastest marathon time ever.If you want a PR, do the Big Cottonwood Marathon.
Do a LOT of downhill training, though.I mean a WHOLE LOT. I did not do this and by the time it flattened out,my calves were absolutely dead. The last 6 miles were not pretty.
I still managed a 3:42,but I was around a 8:00-8:05 pace until mile 20. Bad news.I am still very happy with that 3:42 because I wasn’t expecting anything near that. (Especially after running a 4:23 at Park City a month before.)
BUT-I know that I could have done so much betterwith good, focused training.
I really loved this race. The course runs down through a beautiful canyon for 17 miles. The organization and aid stations were amazing. They had an issue with one of the marathon buses getting stuckon one of the switchbacks heading to the start,so the race started late- but only about 20 minutes.It could have been SO much worse but the race directorsreally figured things out and kept things rolling.I was very impressed.
As I already said- miles 1-17: downhill.
Sometimes crazy downhill.
Just cruised through most of this.
I could tell by mile 10 that my calves were going to give me trouble.
That much downhill is really, really brutal on your body.
The last 9 miles were rolling and boring after the beautiful canyon,but that’s just how it goes, right? They also give you your race photos for FREE! These aren’t random amateur photos. Zazoosh was there doing the photos…
and the race people gave them to us runners- FREE. There were 29 photos of me.Free.
Did I mention Free?
They usually cost at least $7 to download ONE picture.
Awesome.
It’s not their fault that I look like I do in my photos…that’s all on me ;).
I really love huge medals.
I plan on doing this race again next year. This time with the downhill focused training that I mentioned earlier.
One more marathon for 2013-St. George on October 4th. Another great marathon. (My marathon PR is from St. George last year- 3:37)
Even with all the burnout-
I am jazzed that I’ve been able to complete all my races this year.
This is the first year that I haven’t had to miss a race
due to injury (or thyroid disease).
The human body is amazing.