St. George Marathon

On Saturday, October 7, I ran the St. George Marathon. That was my 2nd marathon, having run St. George last year in a time of 3 hours, 42 minutes. My goal last year was to qualify for the Boston Marathon. The required time for my age group last year was 3:30. This year it was 3:35 because I moved up into the next age group.

Note: This is going to be a Jared-length essay. If you want to skip the details, proceed to the last paragraph for the results.

Training
Although I run year round, my official training for the marathon started 4 months ago. I built up my mileage until I was running over 50 miles a week the last couple of weeks. I would usually spend a couple of mornings a week at the high school track doing speedwork. Because I had missed my goal by 12 minutes last year, I trained pretty hard to reach it this year. I was pretty confident that unless something went wrong, I would be able to qualify for Boston this year.

The Night Before
Unfortunately, something did go wrong. Last year I had troubles sleeping the night before the race. This year it was worse. I went to bed at 10:00pm and needed to get up at 4:00am. I was so wound up, however, that I didn't sleep the whole night. Things were not looking good.

The Bus Ride
The race starts 26.2 miles outside St. George up in the mountains. All runners are required to board a bus for a 45-minute ride in the wee hours of the morning to the starting line. The whole way up you're thinking, "Wow! This is a long way!" We arrived about an hour before the race. The area was covered with about 100 port-a-potties, about 50 bonfires, huge lights, and 1000's of runners. It was fun meeting with some of the other runners.

Pacers
One of the race sponsors provided pacers. These are runners who are hired to run the entire race arriving at a certain time. They help runners to maintain a consistent pace. I joined the group close to the 3:30 pacer who was holding some balloons so we could easily keep track of him.

The Race
Because we were toward the front of the line, it only took a minute and a half to cross the starting line after the starting gun sounded. It was still dark. It started getting light about 15 minutes after the race started. It was cold at the start and, fortunately, the weather remained cool for most of the race.

Starting with Mile 3, there were aid stations at every odd mile where we could get water or Gatorade. Three of the aid stations also had energy gel packs, which help a bit. I stopped at every aid station to make sure I was well hydrated.

The first couple of miles were a bit slow because of the huge crowd. By mile 3 we were able to run at our own pace, which was pretty fast. To finish in 3:30 we need to average 8-minute miles. Mile 4 we ran nearly a 7-minute mile. People in our pace group were questioning the strategy of our pacer. At mile 7 we hit a big uphill. Our pacer continued to run a fast pace and I decided he was going to kill us before the halfway point so I slowed down a bit. We had about 5 more miles of slight uphill before we reached the top. By the time I reached the top I was about half a mile behind the pacer, but was still keeping a pretty good pace. By the halfway point, 13 miles, I was only 1.5 minutes behind schedule. Fortunately, the rest of the race was flat or down hill. No more up hills.


I was still feeling pretty good by mile 13, even though I had been running a pretty fast pace. A few mles later, however, I was really feeling the miles and the lack of sleep. By mile 18 I was extremely fatigued but still had 8 miles and an hour to go. By mile 20 we started hitting steep down hills. These were great for keeping up the pace, but were hammering our tired and sore leg muscles.

The last 6 miles, over 45 minutes, I was in a lot of pain and extremely fatigued. But, by then I had caught up with the pacer on the downhills and was not going to let him get ahead again. The only thing that kept me going was an extreme determination to stay with that pacer so I could reach my goal. My body so badly wanted to slow down and take a break. I had to keep pushing and pushing through the pain for over 45 minutes. It felt like I was running faster and faster. Finally with about 2 miles to go, I sensed that I was going to make it. The pain and fatigue were intense, but I knew I could do it. I ran my hardest all the way to the finish line. After crossing over the line, two volunteers asked me if I was going to be alright. I was dizzy and had a hard time walking straight. After finishing I had to find a place on the grass to lie down and couldn't get up for a very long time.

The Result
My final time was 3:29:02. I had qualified for Boston by 6 minutes and had even beat my qualifying time for last year, which was my real goal. I was thrilled!

It's now 3 days later and I'm finally getting to the point where I can walk without hobbling. It was a great experience (that only a runner can understand) and I'm looking forward to going through the whole thing again in April at the Boston Marathon. :)