The Blog is Back:114th Running of the Boston Marathon

After a lengthy gap, the blog is back! Here are the results of the Boston Marathon from today. I finished 412th out of 25,000+ runners in a personal best of 2:47:07. This is over a 9 minute improvement from my previous best. The original goal was to break 2:45. I was on pace to do that for the majority of the race. I went through the first 5k in 19:37 then picked it up a little bit and passed the 10k mark in 38:51. I came through the halfway point (13.1 miles) right on target at 1:21:45. At this point I was feeling fantastic and knew I would be in the 2:45 range. After the half I was clipping away the miles through Newtown, Ma. This is where the infamous hills come into play. They stretch from miles 17-21. They are long and brutal. I would compare them to the hill on Higgins but picture doing that 3 times over right after each other. I actually felt great going up all the hills and even felt decent on the downhill of Heartbreak Hill. This downhill is usually where people fall apart if they were able to make it up the hills ok. Things level off and then there is another steep downhill and this is where I began to fade a little bit. Since you lose time on the uphills, this is where you need to make it up. Unfortunately, I didn't have quite enough to pull off the sub 2:45 and I did fade a little from the 35k-40k. However, I am extremely pleased with the performance. I set a huge PR and the winner actually set a course record in an astonishing 2:05.52. This is about a minute and a half faster than the previous record. It was a great experience and all the miles and hard work that I put in definitely paid off.