The night before the race, I actually stopped and thought about the training I had done. After the half marathon, I essentially took an entire week off, partially due to a long 5 day vacation and partially due to really sore legs. This left me with just about 3 weeks to train, and the first weekend I just did a nice easy 6 miles to get back into the swing of things. I followed that up with 10 and 8 mile long runs, with my two weekly runs somewhere in the 3-6 range. This was actually pretty similar to how I had trained for the half, the only difference was that I never really felt like I pushed myself on any of the runs leading up to the 10 miler.
I assumed there would be a station at some point during the race that would have gels, bananas, donuts, or something for the runner's to eat, so I didn't bring along any of my own. I did eat two gels right before the start of the race though. There weren't really any timers along the way, so I had no idea what my pace was for the vast majority of the race. Apparently there was a single table halfway through that had gels, but I completely missed it, so I didn't eat anything during the run.
Until the last couple miles, I didn't even feel like I was running that fast. I thought I was doing a nice easy pace, probably a little under 9 minutes. The last two miles I really tried to kick it up a notch, and as I crossed the finish line I saw the race time was 1:28 ... just under 9 minute miles! Couldn't complain about that, though then I started to wonder how late I had started. 5 minutes? 8 minutes!?
It took a while for the website to post results, and waiting for that was mildly agonizing:
Perhaps the best part was that I felt pretty good after the race. Worlds better than after the half. I have no idea what the difference was, either.
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