Running on Empty

2009 Utah Valley Marathon

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Location:

Riverton,UT,

Member Since:

May 06, 2006

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Local Elite

Running Accomplishments:


PR Marathon

2:51:33 (St. George 2009)

3:01:00 (St. George 2008)

3:09:52 (St. George 2007)

3:24:48 (St. George 2006)

Short-Term Running Goals:

Improve training. Get serious, lose weight.

Improve speed.


Long-Term Running Goals:

Lifetime fitness, including running.

 

Personal:

Married with 4 kids. I live in Riverton and work as an attorney downtown in Salt Lake City.

Favorite Blogs:

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Miles:This week: 0.00 Month: 0.00 Year: 0.00
Race: 2009 Utah Valley Marathon (26.2 Miles) 03:22:21, Place overall: 53, Place in age division: 5
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.0026.200.000.0026.20

 

Utah Valley Marathon today.  Heading into this run, I was a bit concerned due to lingering soreness in my left calf.  In all honesty, since Ogden, my training has not been great as each time I've upped my training the calf has started to feel sore.  Rather than risk injury (like way too many other bloggers) I've held back.  I had hoped that I'd be able to kick things in gear anyway.  Also, I was under the wrong impression that Utah Valley would be a bit faster course than Ogden.  This proved to be erroneous, as most real race efforts seemed about 5 minutes slower than Ogden. 

Got up, drove from home in Riverton to the buses.  Met up with Tom Lee, who was so gracious as to pick up my packet the night before.  Tom and I had planned on running together and going for the elusive sub 3:00.   We got on one of the later buses along with Rich Borget, and had a nice  ride.  The weather, though humid, was holding pretty well -- no torrential thunderstorm.  We took care of business and moved toward the start.  Saw a few other bloggers, and soon the starting gun alomost went off.  (Technical difficulty as the blank didn't fire initially, but the race was on.)

Here are my splits:

 1 6:51 Rolling. Nice comfortabele
 2 6:30 13:21 Downhill
 3 6:47 20:08 Rolling downward.
 4 6:44 26:53Rolling downward. Seems I've already dropped Tom Lee by now, though not by much.
 5 7:11 34:04 big uphill portion
 6 6:33 40:38 Downhill.
 7 6:35 47:14 Downhill. Still feeling fine.
 8 6:43 53:58 Downhill.
 9 6:33 1:00:31 Downhill.
 10 6:40 1:07:12 Slight downhill net.
 11 6:42 1:13:54 Mild uphill, turns.
 12 6:55 1:20:49 Mild uphill. I lose track of where were were on the course, though I recall it being much more up and down than I had anticipated.
 13 6:45 1:27:02

Mild uphill. Half in 1:28:58 (my Garmin was a bit off of the official mile markers already, despite running pretty good tangents)-- felt good about my half split.

 14 6:53 1:34:28Course sucks along the river.  Too much winding and dramatic up and downs under the bridges.
 15 7:25 1:41:54 Technically a slight downhill, but you cannot tell, bridges, turns. I was starting to lose it already, could tell my fitness had suffered with the conservative training to prevent injury. 
 16 7:56 1:49:50 In hindsight, I suppose I was doing better than I thought given that the course was actually tougher than Ogden.  However, saw sub 3:00 gone.
 17 Auto lap 5:53
 1:55:43 My Garmin really messed up here, don't know what happened
 18 8:56+ 1:29 2:04:40/2:06:09 Finally reset splits mannually.  At this point I could see sub 3:00 was way gone, and totally decided to ease in and avoid any injury.  Surprised Tom Lee hasn't caught me only to find out he had a terrible migrane.
 19 8:34 2:14:43 Thinking, this sucks, way too early to be waddling in, but mentally once the sub 3:00 was gone, didn't care if I was now 3:30.
 20 8:36 2:23:19I think its sometimes harder to slow down, this pace really sucks but I'm trying to be smart and not push anything. 
 21 8:47 2:32:07Slight up from here to end. I think I ran some of this with a BYU student.  I had jokingly motioned to some guys parked in a truck to drive me in.  One of them thought I was signalling for him to come run with me and all of a sudden he came running up along my side.  He had some drum sticks, so I talked with him about percussion for a bit and the BYU marching band, of which he was a member.
 22 10:05 2:42:12I don't remember which miles were which, but I even used the restroom here, just to make the agonizingly slow miles more comfortable.
 23 9:26 2:51:38 As MichelleL can attest to, I did a fair amount of jog/walk these last miles.
 24 9:19 3:00:57 
 25 9:41 3:10:38 
 26 10:02 3:20:40 
 26.2 (garmin .27)
 2:00 3:22:41 Coasted in all alone, 2 minutes ahead of the next finisher.

 

So looking back, I was pleased with the first half, and my calf never acted up too much.  When I realized I couldn't hold sub 3:00 pace, mentally I really shut down, not wanting to get hurt over a 3 something effort.  Again, too many of you other bloggers have seriously injuries which scare the begeebers out of me. 

The last 11 miles sucked, as this turned into a training run.

Comments
From josse on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:13:00 from 75.216.149.202

You should have waited just a little but longer and we could have suffered in together. I am sorry you didn't have the best race and the course was way to turning. I liked it better last year, not so many of those crazy turns. Just look at it as a training run with some good marathon pace miles.

From RivertonPaul on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:18:20 from 67.42.27.114

Josse, Just ask Michelle, I was walking just begging to be caught. :)

From Huans32 on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:21:02 from 138.64.2.76

Great job on finishing it. I totally can feel for you on this race. Been there done that. Once you got off that pace for your sub 3 it just is tough. Very smart though to relax and make it a enjoyable run and not injure yourself.

From Huans32 on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:21:46 from 138.64.2.76

Oh I was going to ask how the humidity was?? Was killing me on the JRP. Could only imagine what you guys were going through.

From DonGardinero on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:24:51 from 75.162.100.84

Great report, Paul. I agree, the trail section along the river was difficult. Way too many ups and downs and too many turns as well. I, too, was under the impression it would be easier than Ogden. I think a lot of people struggled the last few miles. Too bad I didn't see you at the bus loading. By the way, my garmin was about .17 ahead of the mile markers after only the second mile. I also noticed the mile 19 marker was only about a quarter mile after 18. That really messed up my head. How is the calf feeling today?

From mattk on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:29:20 from 67.214.249.195

Way to hang on while being smart! It's not worth taking yourself out of commission for a 10-minute faster time. I'm sorry I missed you in the morning. It's always more fun to talk with people before the race than after!

From RivertonPaul on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:32:42 from 67.42.27.114

Mark, perhaps the humidity played a role. I'm just glad we didn't have lightning. And it wasn't enjoyable LOL.

Dale, thanks, my calf is actually feeling alright.

Matt, my pride is taking quite a blow for my slow finishing time, but at the time my thoughts were "Why risk it?" Thanks for your encouragement.

From Jeff L on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:35:32 from 158.140.1.28

Nice job, even though it wasn't what you wanted. Your time is still pretty good for how much you backed off on the last part of the course.

From Kelli on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:38:41 from 155.101.221.87

WOW, great eye opening report! It makes me more glad I did not run it! It seems everyone thought it would be faster than it was. Bummer. However, you were smart to ease back, no point killing yourself for nothing! But I bet it was tough mentally to finish after that. I wish you had yelled out to me when I passed you--I would have run with for a minute and tried to entertain you a little!!

Great job!!! Nice chatting with you for a sec after the race.

From Tom on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:43:35 from 137.65.56.4

Paul it was great to finally meet you face-to-face and start out the race together (albeit only for a few miles). I'm quite surprised how sore I am after only running what I would consider a mediocre 17-mile training run. I think it's great when we can tough out and salvage a blown race, but also smart to listen close to the bodies signals and do whatever needed to avoid the big injury so we can stay in the game. I think you were smart to not "risk it"

I'm quite confident we'll get that dang sub-3 at some point, but maybe never on this course. Time to relax for a few days (weeks ?) then get back on the horse.

From Andy on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:46:38 from 159.212.71.199

Sorry it was such a tough race. Based on all of the race reports it seems that last year's course was a little faster which is surprising. You will bounce back and get the sub 3.

From JD on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:52:31 from 64.65.159.206

Nice long run Saturday. There's obviously a sub 3 in you just waiting for the right place and time to fly!

From Cal on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 11:58:34 from 66.133.117.3

on the bright side, you did have a great 1/2 marathon time. i'm happy that you avoided injury.

good job. better races to come this year!

From Smooth on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 12:01:07 from 71.36.74.192

Paul,

It was so nice of you to come and chat with me. I think the profile of UVM deceives us into thinking that it's a faster course than Ogden. Those short severe drop and rise tunnels and the annoying hairpin turns can mess up the rythmn and cause havoc to the fatigue quads and calves. I'm with Tom. You're smart not risking any injury once that sub-3 was out. You will recover much faster and ready to ramp up for another sub-3 this Fall.

From Eric Day on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 12:07:54 from 189.192.15.77

Paul, it takes guts to finish once your targets get squash. Excellent job, you should feel proud!

From MichelleL on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 12:27:51 from 71.35.250.200

Hey Paul, hope you didn't get upset at me harassing you. You looked good until that last time :) Hope the sub 3:00 comes for you soon.

From Teena on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 12:36:10 from 67.177.20.13

Just happy that the calf held up! :)

"Thinking, this sucks, way too early to be waddling in, but mentally once the sub 3:00 was gone, didn't care if I was now 3:30."

Well you kicked the trash out of the 3:30!!! :)

(Congrats on the 5th place ... not too shabby for a waddler!!! :))

You're awesome!

From Kathie on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 12:57:20 from 207.155.176.10

Great Job Paul. I know you didn't meet you goal but I think you made the right decisions. What is your next race? Are you doing the Slam?

From Mike Warren on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 13:25:28 from 207.50.149.221

Paul, hope your feeling good today. One thing about races, there is always another. I tell myself that all the time. If the calf is not too bad, this will jump start your SGM training. When I ran Ogden, thats exactly why I did not look at the GPS. I was not in good shape and did not need the aggrevation of knowing my time. Great job gutting this one out!!

From Rhett on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 13:46:18 from 74.41.249.102

Paul, I think you ran a great race. You set your goal and you went for it and now you will have not regrets looking back and wondering if you could have gone faster. You ran a great first half. The second half just wasn't there probably due to how close it was to Ogden and how light your training has been since then. Great report. This race is going to mentally boost you for you sub 3 at SGM.

From allie on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 15:31:56 from 208.110.151.113

great report. i think you made a smart decision and you still got a nice race out of it. well done.

so Des News is not part of the slam?? are you running it?

From MarcE on Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 00:05:02 from 24.155.140.8

Excellent first half. Way to save the equipment for a better day. SGM is 16 weeks away -- you should be able to get it there. (assuming you're in)

From MrsFIT on Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 10:59:16 from 24.2.68.35

I really appreciated the honesty in your report ~ for those of us "mere mortals" its comforting to hear that you "elites" suffer like we do too :(

When is the next attempt at the sub 3?

From argentinerocket on Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 11:46:09 from 74.9.147.114

Good job finishing the race, Paul, you are still amazing to the rest of us "mere mortals" like MrsFit said, a great inspiration!

From Steve Piccolo on Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 03:31:07 from 66.60.123.236

Nice job on the half split and on finishing the race. I'm sure you'll get sub 3:00 at St. George, or before if you're doing another one.

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