Prelude to the Ogden Marathon

My inaugural race report, oooooohhh bbooyyyy. DISCLAIMER: I wish I could say some crazy shit happened that would make the four of you laugh, but nothing really went down. Well, nothing major. It was a beautiful spring day, maybe the best this year. The race was VERY well supported, and the gradual downhill of the course was ideal for a newbie or anyone looking to PR. This race has a lot going for it and I predict that in a few more years it will be a lottery to get in. It’s that damn good. I have to give props to the GOAL Foundation and all the official (and unofficial) sponsors, plus all the volunteers who are awesome.
My biggest drama came with a real lack of training miles. I’ve logged a few miles in the last 10 years, but I’m really not a runner, with only a handful of runs over 10 miles and one half-marry in my history. I meant to train, really I did. I had a plan and everything. But I lost it in the move in March. By “lost” I mean blew it off. We had a knockout of a winter/spring in Utah and then I was sick for three weeks in April. Another huge obstacle for my marathon training is that I really missed cycling. I’m a cyclist. So I did a little running and a little cycling (including a great mountain bike trip to St. George in April), which worked out in the end because the best thing I had going for me was that I was completely uninjured. I’ve also done some endurance racing before so I have a good idea of my nutrition/hydration needs and where my heart rate needs to be to finish a 4+ hour event. In hindsight I would have done just a little more of both, a little more consistently. But running 2, occasionally 3 days a week (8-15 miles total) plus cycling and swimming seemed to train me real fine while keeping me injury-free and happier because I don’t get so burned out on one sport.
What a flaming-ass turdpile of justification that was. I felt so unprepared physically to run 26.2 miles. But I was mentally prepared to suffer. I really wanted to go sub-4 hours so all I needed was a 9-minute pace, trouble was I needed to do 26 of them-thar 9-minute miles. I set that goal because I just didn’t want to be out there any longer than that. I wasn’t really scared, I have a respect for that kind of distance, but I knew I’d finish barring any mishaps.

I'll spare you the actual race report for the next post. Or two.