PDX 42.2 @ 3:26:00 & PB :)

* a little overdue, but never too late…right?

In the beginning of October, Jess, Cody, Kat, Amber, Louis and I packed up two dogs and two empty beer coolers into two cars and headed south to Portland for the marathon.

My one complaint about the BMO was that I wish I had spent more time training at my marathon pace (M-pace). So this time around I made conscience effort to run my M-pace at least 1x every 10 days. How did I figure out what my new M-pace was going to be? It just happened organically I suppose. 4:48/km. This meant I should be able to run a 3:23 marathon, which also mean I’d accomplish 3/3 of my goals; 1.)  finish the race happy.  2.) PB  3.) BQ (In case you didn’t read my BMO race recap I ran 1sec shy of a BQ)

Training went great, with a slight set back of being bed ridden due to the infamous  Vancouver seasonal-everyone and their cat has it -flu, leaving me just about bed ridden for a week and half before the race.

Despite this little bump in the road, come race day I was feeling 80% better and itching to just get it over with. It was still pitch black out when we lined up at the start line. I had lost Kat, Jess and Cody at the porta-toilets and scooted up behind the 3:25 pace bunny. Due to my lack of running the week leading up to the race I felt as though I wasn’t going to be able to run exactly what I was hoping so I went to plan: Hold on the 3:25 pace bunny as hard as I could.

If you have ran the Portland Marathon before you can understand what a wonderful race it is. You start downtown at dawn and run through the streets up Chinatown and continue to make your way along the river and loop over the water and back to downtown. The first 5k was mentally a little tough, seeing as I already was contemplating a DNF, but once I saw that sun rising behind Mt Hood has the fog burned off into the purple sunrise  I sucked it up and just went with it.

Unlike the BMO, there was no low-point for me. I kept waiting for the pain to kick, for something to start hurting, for me to slow down but it never happened. I rolled through the final 5k and crossed the finish line three minutes shy of my goal pace and with a 9 minute PB in a time of 3:26:00.