So I have now ran/driven through all of New England. It was a bunch of fun, and I will consider doing it again next year if they hold it again. Officially I ran 26.4 miles, but according to my Garmin it was closer to 27. If you add up my times across all three legs that I ran, I would have ran the distance in 3:32:00, which would be a massive marathon PR for me. The question now becomes, how well would I have ran across a full 26 miles with out stopping and resting for up to 8-9 hours between legs. I don't know if it still would have been that fast, but while running this past weekend I noticed that I am a far stronger runner right now then I was last year.
Leg 1: 8.1 officially, 8.45 on my Garmin. I ran this leg in 1:08:59, or 8:09 minute per mile pace. This leg started with a 300 foot climb within the first mile and a half. What was great was that when I started the leg I couldn't see the hill, and I was running along a nice flat section for about an eighth of a mile. Having hardly ran at all on our honeymoon, my legs were nice and rested and I was thinking to myself, man my legs feel great. Then I took a right turn and saw the hell and went oh hell. I am proud to say I didn't stop to walk at all as I went up the hill, though my quads were starting to hurt a lot by the time I got to the top. From there the entire run was almost completely downhill, and in case you didn't know, it is actually far worse on your legs to run downhill then up. It can also be a bit dangerous as gravity kind of just drags you along and you can reach speeds that are hard to slow down from. One of the things I was trying to do was to keep my paces relatively slow as I knew from my overnight relay last year that your legs could just be completely dead by the time you reach the third leg. With all the downhill running though it was hard to keep the pace around 8:30, so this leg was a bit fast.
Leg 2: 6.9 officially, 6.97 on the Garmin. I ran this leg in 53:15. Out of the three legs, this one was the most fun, nerve racking, and speedy of the three. Fun because it was ran late at night in the rain, which running in the dark can be fun and I enjoy running in the rain; nerve racking because it was night and raining and I was running down route 9 in New Hampshire, so the few cars on the road were of course flying down the road; speedy because again the run was mostly down hill. This leg again started with a 300 foot climb. As soon as reached the top of this hill, I immediately started the speediest section of all three of my legs as I started a downhill run that was just over one mile in length. While there were a couple more uphills over the rest of the leg, it was pretty much all downhill till it flattened out just after mile 5 and by the time I was able to carry my momentum till the finish. Because of the long downhill, my average pace for this leg was 7:38, way faster than I wanted, and I could tell by the time I finished that my legs were really tired and that the third leg was going to be tough.
Leg 3: 11.1 officially, 11.45 on the Garmin. I ran this leg in 1:31:04. After running the first two legs faster than I wanted, I knew that I was going to be tired for this leg. This leg thankfully didn't have a 300 foot climb at the start, and while it did go from 400 foot back to around sea level, it was stretched over 11 miles, so I didn't really notice the downhill running as much. I must have psyched myself up a little because my first four miles were all around or under 7:30 pace. After that I started to slow down some, but overall I generally kept the pace under 8:30. By the time I hit the last two miles, part of me wanted to stop and walk some because my quads were just done for the day, but I knew if I stopped that I would not be able to get going again, so I toughed it out and finished, though I did walk for about 30 seconds over the final hill.
I am really surprised at how much stronger a runner I am right now then I was a year ago. If my marathon training goes well this year, it will be interesting of what my time goal will be for the marathon. I currently have a goal in mind and I may have to adjust it slightly just based off of how well I ran this weekend. But for now I just have a few weeks of maintenance runs, and then marathon training starts at the beginning of July.
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