Getting Fired Up!!!! Boston 11 days away.

Some Exerpts from Race Reports and Other Posts from the Past - for a little mood setting.

Boston Marathon 2007:

First hill of 4 – for some reason it seemed all the hills had a pretty strong headwind - I attacked it much faster than pace I planed for hills. HR monitor started chirping at me for exceeding 165 bpm which was music to my ears - race plan had been to go to whatever felt ok after 16 miles and no longer be restrained by HR and the chirping meant I was pushing it to next level.

2nd hill was attacked much as the first - I passed A LOT of people on the hills (This Houston boy CAN run hills).

Attacked hill 3 then on to heartbreak hill.

Again attacked the hill passed a bunch of people with a big headwind.

From the top going down. The mental battles were intense. Finally what won out mostly was "this is the BOSTON MARATHON!!" with that no half efforts for any stretch allowed.

I stopped looking at the watch - and pushed with all I had.

My legs burned but all felt healthy. I kept plowing on.

Most all around me are slowing and I am passing people like crazy here. By the time I got to Citgo sign I had found the practice of closing my eyes very tempting - they felt so comfortable closed.

This was a tough mile but I didn't let up and kept on passing people enjoying my watch chirping at me, and enjoying the brief shuteyes.

There is the finish line less than a quarter mile away. I couldn't muster the all out sprint this time but pushed in with a very fast run still passing a few more. I managed to do the last ½ mile at 6 minute mile pace.

I CAN STOP NOW!!!!

There was so much emotion at this point I nearly had to stop and cry in happiness.

Boston for me lived up to all anticipations and way more!!!!


Pre-Houston-08 Marathon

This will be a no stress race - local so logistics are easy. Staying the night at the host hotel about 100 yards from the start/finish. At this point I've never felt better going into a race which in itself kinda makes me nervous.

Race plan - I'm debating between a heartrate pacing strategy or a mile split pacing strategy. I'm leaning toward the heartrate strategy (Set the Garmin alarms at 162 low 166 high and stay between) but I'm a bit nervous about it because last couple weeks the pace at my typical MP target has been scary fast and I'm debating whether to trust it from the start and go for broke to get whatever time it will deliver or whether to ratchet it back for the first part.

I've resolved to not run a conservative race - this is a balls to the walls, controlled-all out, give it all I got, pass out at the finishline race - anything short just feels wrong

Go for lots of pain and suffering.

For the most part I want to squeeze every ounce of potential out and see what time that produces - but I do have a couple race time milestones I think would be neat to beat.

A) SubLance (A stretch goal 2:46:43 - 6:21.8 pace)
B) Sub2:50 (6:29.3 pace) - seems this should be do-able.

Houston Marathon

Wow - I am sitting in shock looking at 2:40:46 finish time.

I looked up to the finish - I saw the clock - it was ticking with a 2:40:xx - I was floored - I charged to the finish and took too steps past the finish and just had to yell out my excitement - I was in total shock.

And to top it all off - I'm pretty sure I WON the race for 40+ runners