it's taken me a while to get up a race report, been very busy at work, and also wanted to wait until my blood sugar was up and my mental capacity was back to a reasonably normal level so I wouldn't say something, or make any jokes, that nonblogging drama queens who troll these blogs behind a veil of anonymity would find insensitive and use to cause me grief. So anyway my wife had to do parent teacher conferences in the evening on Friday so I went solo to this one, but fortunately my good friend Craig Donaldson who was my teacher in the MTC exactly 32 years ago was running, his flight arrived at the St George International Airport at 5:48 PM. I managed to get from Logan to the SG airport with 5 minutes to spare before his flight arrived. I had to double check google map to be sure this was really an airport that handled commercia flights and I hadn't inadvertently strayed to a random crop dusting landing field but sure enough in came the delta connection flight with Craig on it. Another friend from my mission has a second house in St George he gave us for the weekend. It only had 6 bedrooms, 6 baths, 2 family rooms, and 7 TVs but we managed OK with the cramped quarters. We ate the pasta dinner at the expo, then went back to the palatial estate and watched the first half of the BYU-USU game but gave up from boredom after the first half ended at 6-3 and went to bed. Turns out the game ended at 6-3 so we didn't miss anything. Geez what a boring game. oh yeah the marathon.... Craig rolled us out of bed and we drove to the start, caught a bus, and I ditched him to go into the ELITE runner's area. I felt bad leaving poor Crag in steerage, but on the other hand I am an ELITE runner entitled to use the ELITE area, and really I shouldn't be hanging out with the lower class runners anyway. I guess Craig should be grateful I even allowed him to sit by me on the bus, but hey, we ELITE runners like to throw a few crumbs to the little guys now and then. I even offered to sign his bib for him. In the ELITE runners area I ran into ELITE runners Kelli and Scott and had a nice chat with them. I didn't see any of the other bloggers at the start though. Bummer. I was surprised how dark it was at the start. I made my classic error of going out too fast, in part because it was too dark to see my watch, and I am really a pretty stupid marathon runner, more heart than brains. Miles 1-7 were 6:19, 6:29, 6:13, 6:09 (dumb dumb dumb), 6:18, 6:04 (really dumb) 6:09 (geez I am dumb). Well, then came this Vejo hill I had heard about and it was a very unpleasant surprise. I actually never really looked hard at the course map ahead of time or planned a race stategy because, well, I am dumb when it comes to marathons. So I loaf up vejo 7:16, 6:53, 6:50, 7:13, ouch. Weird thing happened to me at mile 8 though to slow me down, my left foot fell asleep. I was wearing compression sleeves and maybe overtightened the laces on my shoes. I was wearing these saucony kinvaras I had bought but only put 20 miles or so on (dumb) and had never run a long run in them (dumb) and actually I can now say I really don't like saucony. Sorry Jake. I should have stuck with my mizuno ronins, but I am kind of dumb. My foot got so numb at mile 10 I thought I might have to take the shoes off and run barefoot, or at least stop and loosen the laces, but since they were triple tied that might have taken a while. So I wiggled the toes and finally got circulation back but I bet I lost a minute with this unexpected problem. Well, things rebounded here for a bit with 6:29, 6:28, 6:10, 6:03, 6:28, 6:36 then I got tired, my quads were trashed, my feet hurt, I hate kinvaras, I am a wimp, and so the next miles were 7:10. 6:39, 6:29, 6:58, 6:45, 6:45, 6:56, 7:04, 6:39 for 0.22 miles. My garmin clocked me in right at 26.22. At the finish I saw some bloggers, James and his family, Walter looking like he was going to throw up (nothing unusual there), Kelli and Scott again. Waited for my nonelite friend Craig to finish. He never really trained for this one but still ran a respectable 3:52. unfortunately he needed a 3:30 for a BQ and missed it so I guess we won;t be going to boston. I saw boston is still open, but I think my marathon days are over, because (1) I hate the training, (2) I don;t like training, (3) I am a wimp, and (4) I don't think I am a very smart marathon runner. Maybe I will stick to halfs and under but who knows. My impressions of St George: great race, great course, great volunteers and organizers, very professional. I am really glad I ran this even though I didn't break 2:50 which was my goal. But in retrospect I am really not a 2:50 marathoner. I carried poor Craig back to my truck, I got some consoilation in that he was hurting worse than me. I actually didn;t feel so bad for having run a marathon. Maybe I should have pushed it harder? yeah right.....
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