Utah Valley Marathon, 2014-06-14

Another race weekend has come and gone, well, almost. I worked on the Friday night and left work around 10:30 to try to get some extra sleep as my alarm was set for 2am. Was able to get to bed by 11:30, fell asleep around midnight, and was rudely woken up by my alarms at 2. I had all my racing clothes set out so I could get out the door as quickly as possible, but was still a bit behind my schedule.
Driving south on I-15 a car with a bunch of running stickers passed me, so figured they must know where they are going, I’ll follow them. That decision worked out great as I followed them into a parking lot across the road from where the marathon buses were lined up. Got onto the first bus around 3:10 and within minutes we were heading to Wallsburg. I was too tired to visit with anyone on the bus but enjoyed the ride in a Prevost which our company has gotten away from.
Getting off the bus at the start line, I turned to the driver to thank him and it turned out I knew him, Randy Gerber. He used to drive for us and recently his wife passed away. She was also a bus driver.
We had 2 and a half hours before the race started so I navigated my way into my non-snuggie blanket and lay down on the grass next to a fire pit and tried to nap. I was unsuccessful and after an hour decided to wander around.

Elsha and Jonathan

First person I came across was Elsha Stockwell and her pusher Jonathan Moss. It was great visiting with her for a few minutes. She was doing her first full marathon and very excited about it. I told her I’d try to find some of the others in our group, but it was getting too close to the start time.
Met up with David Crawford for a few minutes and then found Josh, Monte and Becca near the bus taking the drop bags to the start.
We made our way to the start and the gun went! Crossed the mats and realized my garmin had timed out! Took about 1 or 2 minutes for it to find the satellites so my time wasn’t going to be synced with the chip times.
The temps were perfect, not cold enough to need gloves, but cool enough to not overheat.
I had decided that this race I wasn’t going to push my time, just run relaxed, say around a 10:30 to 10:45 pace and make up some time on the downhills.

Josh, Becca and Timothy were slightly behind me the first mile, but I slowly pulled ahead of them going through Wallsburg. By the sounds of all the dogs barking, it seems like there are more dogs than people in the town!
Looking north towards the mountains they looked inviting to us as we knew there was some downhills awaiting. The first 6 miles were slow and easy, around a 10:28 pace. Passed two girls and thought one looked familiar, she said hi, so I asked her if she was Joycelyne and she wasn’t. I was going to see a lot of those two throughout the race. Mile 7 was torture! I hadn’t spend enough time at the porta-potties so by the time I got to the aid station at mile 7 I was desperate. I had been eyeing bushes and trees but nothing suited my fancy. Saw one that might have worked way in the distance and had seen a few guys heading there.  But by the time I got there another guy had it occupied, glancing that direction I sort of noticed he had his shorts down around his ankles and was facing the roadway with his bare buttocks in full view while he tended to his post cleanup.

I saw there were about 40 people between me and the aid station and figured the more people I passed before that point, the less wait there’d be for me. So I raced those 40 people, passing most of them in my 7:00/mile sprint. The spike of this sprint is clearly shown in the garmin chart lol. While I was waiting my turn, Angie found me and we were able to get a picture taken of the two of us while I did the pottie dance. I told her I’d try to catch up after I was done.

This added a couple of minutes to my time, but I wasn’t worried. There were some nice downhills but some mile long uphills too as we passed the lake.
Sometime around this point I passed a group of firefighters dressed in their gear who were doing the marathon. Not sure why, but I’m sure it was for some fund raiser. Awesome guys.
Got to the half way point around 2:21. I thought I doubt I can do a negative split on the last half so knew my finish time was going to be around 4:40 to 4:50 if I kept strong through the race. Was very surprised to see Christy at the aid station, it was like having a breath of fresh air seeing her.
Shortly after that as we were climbing more hills I had another surprise. I came up behind a runner that I thought looked very much like Loan O’Brian, and it turned out it was her! I had never met her, but had tried to help out her and her husband about a year prior when they were having flight troubles getting into SLC in time to get their bibs. We had been friends on facebook since. We walked for a bit and visited which was one of the highlights of the race.
The last hill of the race is tough enough on its own, but we also had to contend with a bad wind coming up the canyon. It was a struggle, but I’d done worse hills.
Back to the girl who wasn’t Joycelyn, with her friend...by this time of the race they had passed me about 20 times and I also kept passing them. It became quite a joke as we leap frogged throughout the race. In their walk breaks I’d pass them, but then they’d pass me once they started running again.  But they encouraged me to make my walk breaks as short as possible.

The final stretch of 26.2 miles

Coming out of the canyon around mile 21 we got to the worst part of the race flat, straight and difficult. The crowds were awesome though, cheering and encouraging the runners. A group of firefighters had a huge hose spraying onto the road for those who wanted to get cooled off. I took advantage of that. A few other places they had sprinklers set up like a car wash that you could run under to once again get cooled off. Even though the temps were around 60F it felt a lot warmer but NOT as warm as it was in Ogden.

Around mile 23 those two girls passed me again and I told them, “You guys are killing me!” but shortly after that I was able to dig deep, took my shirt off and passed them and not see them until I had finally crossed the finish line and got a photo of them finishing a couple of minutes later.
No PR for me today, but the finish time was about 22 minutes faster than the Ogden marathon 3 weeks ago and I was happy about that.
Now to train and look forward to my next marathon late September. That is, unless I switch up another race before that...

Official Time: 4:50:54. Pace: 11:06/m. Overall 1075, Gender place 633, Division place 44
Interesting note, my rank at 13.1 miles was 1155th. 9 miles later my rank had improved to 985th, so I passed 170 people. 4 miles later my rank is 921. Shows I was stronger in this race at the end compared to other marathons I’ve done even though I was 15 minutes short of my PR.

After the race was done, I was able to meet up with some of my friends. See some of the pics below...

Angie and Galen

Josh, Becca and myself

Loan O'Brian and myself