What a great job Dave Wood and crew did on the logistics of this race! And thanks to my wife for crewing me out there in the Oklahoma panhandle, as I couldn't do it without her. This race starts close to Texhoma, Tx and finishes in Elkhart, Ks. We stayed in Guymon, Ok which left us about a 20 minute drive to the start but 45 minute drive to packet pickup and pasta feed on Friday. Guymon has the best choice for hotels and restaurants, Walmart etc. I got up first thing Saturday and checked the weather radar and the morning storms had just rolled through the the panhandle so it looked like the start was going to be dry and it was actually a little cool out. We got started at 7 am it looked like there was less than 50 runners at the start. I started rolling off 8 minute miles and was running with 1 Ultimate Direction water bottle filled with a water and a Coke flavored Nuun Tab. Nothing but Nuun and Kind bars the whole way. I was running 5th leaving Tehoma all relay teams out in front of me. The first 3 were young speedsters that would only stay in sight for 7 miles. I would catch a slower runner than hit the relay station and someone would run me down this happened twice. There was a 6 mile east to west portion on the course that I wanted to get passed before the winds cranked up miles 18-24 and I was successful as we had cool cloud cover and a nice pushing breeze up to that point. I went through the marathon about 3:40 my pace was starting to slow I changed out shoes several times to change the muscle angle on my legs but I always found myself back in my brand new New Balance 890s. My stops with my wife were starting to longer as I watched my average pace go from somewhere around 8 minutes to 9 minutes. There at the ending miles I used the run a mile then walk for 1 minute technique to get in. I missed a turn in the last mile but an Elkhart cop caught me, turned me around and got me back on course. This marks the longest race I have run on pavement as the trails are much more forgiving on the body. Quads are hurting and will be out for a few days as my triathlon training 30-40 mile running weeks is not sufficient to support 6+ hours of running. |