St. Jude’s Memphis Marathon Dec. 1st 2012

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Trip started Friday afternoon and this trip was with my oldest kid. Carlos Garcia.  He is 17 years old and is from Spain.  He is living with us for the next 6 months and he has been in the States and with us for 4 months.  He is a great kid and he loves to go.  So when I asked Carlos if he wanted to go to Memphis he said “YES!” 

            So we loaded up in the New Nissan Versa I bought and hit the road!  I-40 felt like I was in the movie CARS with all 18-wheelers on the interstate!  We stopped at a great burger joint in Russellville to break and the drive!

            This would be my second running of the St. Jude’s Marathon and I remembered the course being pretty flat and pretty fast.  Three years ago it was like 25 at the start and this year was the opposite.  It was very warm, but I wasn’t to worried because I wasn’t racing.  I was doing my first big marathon pacing and I was a PACER.  And I was a little nervous because I had ran Tulsa 13 days before the marathon and I had done a 5 hour forest run with Tom 7 days before the race.  So this would be 3 marathons in 3 weeks, and my legs were feeling pretty bad at the end of the run with Tom. But they were feeling pretty good for the race!

             I worked the expo and that got me excited to pace because so many people were running there first marathon.  Also one of the most exciting things was seeing Donald Trump’s Son at the race because their foundation had donated 20 million dollars to the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital!  WOW that is so cool, and topping that off the Hero’s and other runners had raised 7.6 million dollars!

           
            Ok onto the race again,  it was warm start and we were off pretty much dead on pace 7:26 per mile to cross the line under a 3:15!  We hit the next 2 miles a were a little ahead of pace but I was not to worried about it.  Memphis crowds were awesome!  They were so pumped to be outside cheering for the runner.  Around mile 3 we came back by the stadium and I was getting the crowd screaming for our pace group.  We had a big crew and we were nailing the miles!  Jon and I were the 2 pacers for this group and we came in at the half with 40 seconds in the bank and I thought this was great but we didn’t need to hit any more miles any faster or we would start dropping people.  And that is what we did at mile 16, they started dropping like flies, and we had hit some wind and hills.  But the worst thing was that the temperature was moving up into the 70s and this is not good for marathoning.  I have a history of doing terrible in the heat.  I started feeling this heat when we turned at mile 20 and we had the wind at our backs.  We only had about 2 runners with us at this point and one of them said wow it got 10 degree’s hotter when we turned.  I then started feeling worse, so I hit another GU.  I probably should have hit 3 or 4 and then started hammering the power aid.  Because when I hit mile 23 I told Jon that I was hitting the wall.

            I was wrong it wasn’t the wall , it was a huge brick wall. I handed my pace stick to Steve the last runner that was with us and told him to stay with Jon and get in under 3:15.  I then fell 14 minutes off pace and I limped in for a 3:29 finish.  I feel 14 minutes off pace in 3 miles!  WOW what a day!  Never know how your body is going to do in a race.  I feel like I helped the runners a lot by telling them to relax, drop their arms.  I also told them about fueling and everything else during the race and had the time of my life running in support of so many runners!  I wish I could have finished on pace though.  It was rough and not as rough as the next 2 hours after the race because I was throwing up and I couldn’t keep liquids down.

I was glad I had Carlos there to help me find my way back to Poteau!

Tulsa Route 66 Marathon 2012

2012 Tulsa Marathon

My third running of the William Route 66 marathon and I was excited to run this year!  One day before the race started and we were in the car driving up to Tulsa and I was thinking about how the weather had been amazing all week!  Everyday of the week would have been a great day for marathon it was 30ish in the morning and warming up to around 40ish in the mid morning and very little wind.  That is perfect weather for me to run a great race and the weather was looking a little worse for Sunday morning in the 40s and winds picking up to 15mph around 10am.

I wasn’t going to let that worry me to much because I had trained hard and was ready to race!  My legs were feeling pretty bad at the first of the week because I hadn’t been running as much. But this is always normal for me a week before the marathon.

So it is still Saturday and my wife is on a mission to get some of her Christmas shopping done and I was glad to sit outside in the beautiful sunshine and weather. So I set the seat back and had a good cat nap, then onto the Expo I went and it seemed like forever since I had been to an expo because I haven’t ran a marathon in a long time because of the dang hot summer!  The Expo was fun I went running after a parachute dropped prize and could have jumped and got it but didn’t want to steal it from a little kid!  I then waited in line to get a picture with my wife in the photo booth and that was fun, always fun getting in a closet-like space with my wife.

Then we went back to the mall and I entertained shopping for a little bit, which was a mistake.  I didn’t enjoy it and probably should have stayed off my legs I probably walked 2 miles in the mail and saw so many over weight people, it was truly sad, I guess I don’t get out that much but it was shocking in that moment to see so many in one place.  Anyway got to get out of there and got to meet up with my good friend Weldon that lives in Tulsa and we always stay with him and go to dinner with him the night before the race, thanks Weldon.  He also drops us off and picks us up from the race, and that is really awesome!

Ok enough about life and on to racing!  Marathon morning was great weather was looking good got to the race same time as always.  Gun goes off at 8am and we are off. Mile one Tom is right beside me and it was like, “hi.” He said your looking good and we ran together for the next 9 miles and it was great to have Tom with me at the beginning of the race.  I told him at mile 5 that I was kinda feeling funny at mile 2 and 3 but he said that normal and I was feeling great from the rest of the time with Tom, he broke the wind for me a couple of miles and was great company.  He dropped at mile 10 to go run with Chris Montogomery.  And I had Weldon with me at this moment.  He was on his road bike and we were cruising down Riverside and he didn’t know if he was suppose to do that or not but no one said anything to him.  It was kinda of frustrating because he was not pedaling and I could hear every once in awhile that he would hit the breaks to slow down.  The wind was pushing him a lot and it was pushing me but I was still having to put out a lot of effort to run the pace I was running. Weldon said at one point “is this rights it says we are going 9mph” I told him yes we are going pretty fast right now.  I hit the half at 1:23:30, He continued with me until we got to the end of Riverside and then he went to head back to get his truck and camera to meet us at the finish.

This is really when the marathon started for me, because up to this point it had been pretty easy but when I turned up to go into down town Tulsa the uphill became hard and the wind.  I looked at my watch going up one of these hills and saw a pace of 7:15. My slowest mile at this point was into the wind at mile 6 or 7 and it was a 6:42 with Tom breaking some wind.  The slowest mile I had in 2011 was a 7:00 and in 2011 I ran the second half 12 seconds slower than the first half.  But this would not be true for 2012 because I couldn’t put together any strong miles against the wind or the hills that the second half had to offer.  One of the great things about this section was that I was still passing people and I hadn’t gotten passed yet!  So I was still running pretty strong even though my pace had slowed.  Then I hit a really slow mile against the wind and a girl comes up beside me and I get behind her to let her take some of the wind.  Then I hear, “always running with a girl,” and it was Tom standing on the side cheering me on.  I hung in for a tough couple miles and then got into Tulsa Campus.  I was flying in this area last year and it was hard to be running about 20 seconds slower per mile in this area somewhere in this area or before this area was mile 20 and I was really wanting to rally because I looked at my watch and did the math and knew I could still PR.  The wind in TU just really discouraged me and I was just trying to hang in there.  And that is what I did for the next 4 miles and then I got to mile 24 and Tom pops out and runs with me again up a big hill which was a huge help!  And then I pressed on to pass 2 more people at the finish with a time of 2:58.  A couple minutes from a PR but I was super happy with this run and any Boston Qualifier is a good day when I hadn’t ran well all of 2012!

My legs were pretty good and my toes were tore up pretty good!  But it was great!  My favorite part about the trip was driving back at Sallisaw on top of Backbone Mountain seeing the Sun Pop Out and shining on Cavanal the World’s Highest Hill!  I am ready to start running that dude and getting to top more often!

I love where I live and love to run where I live!

Rails To Trails Winter 2012 Magazine

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Pretty Pumped that I get to be apart of a small part of this running community in Poteau, OK.

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything on this Blog in almost a Year!

I am currently about to put some of my Race Data on the Blog and then start Blogging about my Adventures from this point on.  Help me not forget all the fun I have out in the wild and pushing my body to the limits!