Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

Top of Utah Marathon. I've been looking forward to this for awhile even though it was not to be an all-out race. I enjoy the local event, and was looking forward to pacing people.

Weather was just about perfect. Nice and cool at the start but not uncomfortable. Good tailwind coming out of the canyon. It felt a little warm halfway through, but stayed mild to the finish, especially once I dumped some water on me.

Due to the Alta race last Saturday, I was unsure whether I would finish. I knew I had more than enough fitness to meet the task, but it was previous muscle damage I was worried about. My quads had recovered, but my hamstrings were tight all week. I knew if they tightened up too bad, or if the quads reactivated, I would need to call it a day at Mile 20, nothing more than a good long run. But I did want to run all the way through if it won't cause damage. I just needed to listen to my body.

Along with pacing goals, I wanted to treat today as a dress rehearsal for St. George - same routine, same clothes, same shoes, same drinking, gu, etc. I needed several questions answered:

• Would flats agree with me for the marathon (I've never worn them before).
• Would the Garmin be distracting over that distance (due to autolap)
• Would Gu upset my stomach

As far as the race itself, Jon's entry best summarized it. My garmin ended up getting quite a bit off due to poor tangents (hard run good tangents in a large group), so I will borrow Jon's watch splits. For St. George, I will either turn autolap off, or just use a regular watch.

It took me a while to find our pace. By the third mile, though, we were locked in, and I stopped thinking about it, and just checked the garmin every so often to make sure we were not too fast. I had to stop and tinkle twice, which cost 20 seconds apiece, but I was able to catch up within the mile both times. That is strange for me, because I usually don't have to tinkle during races, and twice is certainly excessive.

I started out the first few miles feeling good, but my hammies tightened up by Mile 5. This made my finish doubtful. However, they didn't feel any worse at Mile 10, and about the same at Mile 15. I decided at Mile 18 that I would finish, as my stride was still bouncy and my body was hanging in there just fine. The flats felt good, so I will go with them for St. George. I drank lots of gatorade a took a couple GU's, and no problem from that either.

Pacing was fun, and it was rewarding to run for a purpose beyond individual accomplishment. I have always gotten a thrill from seeing other people PR (a great thing about track and field, lots of events to watch teammates!), and was happy to take part in helping people in the race today. Logan and I were on a mission. I'll remember this race because of it.

The first 16 miles were pretty easy for pacing because everyone was feeling good. The only trick was to slow the pack down when it needed it. Once we hit the tailwind, we tried to decrease effort and coast for a while to let people "rest". It's tempting to hammer too hard in those situations. Even with that, those miles were still the fastest.

After Mile 16, I could sense Jon laboring a bit more. Steve and Adam broke off, and both were looking great. Logan and I stayed with Jon and went to work with him and on him. I'm not sure if Jon got sick of me yelling at him for 10 miles, but my goal was to encourage him and keep him focused on his goals. We concentrated on milking the downhill through Mile 18, and then had Jon tuck in close behind us for the rather long climb through Millville into Providence. We hit about 6:20 for those uphills miles, which was great. We tried to work the downhill into Providence and mustered 6:10 or so. I knew Jon was grappling with the Wall, but hoped that Logan and I could do as much of the work as possible (there was headwind here and there), and help keep him focused and resolute. Speaking from my own experience, it's easy to stop caring during a race and just "settle" for finishing, but that was not an option today.

Jon was an absolute champ and kept his focus, never doing anything slower than 6:40 during the last four miles. I knew one really bad mile could cost him 2:40, but all the miles were solid. Most miles were 6:30 or a little under. That is very good for this late in a marathon while fatigued, especially the TOU course, which is not forgiving. We caught Adam in River Heights, and dropped him a little bit later. We worked the uphills, and had Jon open up on the downhills, where he got some nice surges in and ate up ground. The last quarter mile Jon was able to to smell the barn and kicked it in hard. We got 2:40 with room to spare. Group hugs all around. Adam finished soon afterward, a very nice PR for him as well.

I was happy to finish and felt pretty good considering the hard week I had recovering from Alta, but I was most happy for Jon, Adam, Cody, Kory, and the others who ran their butts off and got awesome PR's. The FastRunningBlog took 1-2-3-4-5 in the 24-29 age group: a clean sweep. That was pretty cool.

Congrats also to Hobie Call for a performance that lifts him among America's elites. Very few Americans can run that fast. Cool stuff, and inspiring too.