april 21st - disappointment!

patriots day, april 18, 2011 did not turn out as i had hoped. after months of training and pushing myself i felt ready for a top notch race. mentally i was ready and had what i thought was a solid race strategy. race day started out just fine. grabbed the first bus to athlete's village and staked out a nice place to relax. soon i was joined by 2 fellow RWOL friends, Nick and Karyn. it was a great pleasure to be able to chat with them since it helped me stay relaxed. 10am race started. 1st 5 miles went well. split was 34:19 and remained consistent. the next 10 miles i clicked off miles at an even pace. legs felt good and i seemed to be in a good rhthym. the next 5 miles i hit the newton hills and yet i still managed to hold court. hit 20 in 2:16:51 @6:50 pace. if i finished the last 10k in 6:55 pace i would have been under 3 hrs. at that moment i definitely felt that was a reasonable goal. legs still had some left and i was ready to go. then disaster struck, a sharp pain in my right chest just underneath my rib cage. i could not breathe. simply put i ran till i could not breathe then i was forced to walk till i could catch my breath. the last 6.2 miles was a slow death march. to keep me going i high fived the fans who offered there cheers and great support. the fans there were absolutely magnificent. as i approached the finish, my friend Nick came up to me and we finished together. 3:22:40. not what i had hoped but i did finish the greatest marathon.

some takeaways from this experience. breathing is important to running. my training was dead on. i know i have the endurance. i would not change my training regimen one bit. i was definitely ready. its time to look forward, not backwards. nothing to be gained by dwelling what has happened. focus on what lays ahead. gettysburg on 5/1 and cleveland 5/15. as a sticker on my car says: 26.2 miles- what could possibly go wrong.  alot can happen, you just have to move on. focus on the positive, not the negative. i live to run another day!