First, a congratulations to all the bloggers out there who had outstanding races, what an amazing day for many of you. My day was not quite what I had envisioned, but I will take solace in the fact that I did at the very least cross the finish line. The race started well enough with a 5:47 first mile, about where I wanted to be, I figured I could run pretty comfortably around 5:50 pace and maybe a bit faster on the downhill sections. I stayed on goal pace until Veyo, I just wanted to cruise through the climbs and focus on hammering the downhills. Besides having frozen hands I was not feeling too bad, but my pace through the hills was much slower than I would have liked. At about 14 my left achilles started getting tight, I did not think too much of it, but it kept getting tighter and tighter as the race went on. By 16 I was limping and had to stop and stretch. The stretch helped a little, but by 18 I was limping full on and not able to push at all. My altered stride started to affect my IT band on the same side and before I knew I was stopping and stretching every mile or so. I thought of dropping out at this point, but there was no way down so I continued to limp my way through. At this point I was only running 8:30 miles and hurting every step. By the time I reached 24 I figured I could still run under 3 hours and picked up my hobble to pace that would allow be to finish under 3 hours. I really had better expectations for the day, but I made a commitment to finish and I did. By the afternoon my left foot was sore enough that I was barely able to walk at all, but it will heal as will my ego. I will now focus on getting healthy and make another attempt in the not too distant future. Again, a special thanks to all the kind words from all you bloggers, and to Travis Hildeband for yelling at me not to quit. This is an amazing community, and I am proud to be a part of it and to have met so many great people! | 