I finished my first marathon in Little Rock on Sunday. Papa Runner and I flew down Friday and spent a great evening with some friends who had moved there a few years ago. On Saturday, I picked up my packet from the Expo, bought a new 26.2 sticker for my van, and attended a meeting for the early starters.
One of the reasons I picked Little Rock is for its generous time limit. Many races have a cut-off of 6 hours or even less. I thought I could finish in 6 on a good day, but I wanted a cushion in case conditions were less than ideal. Little Rock has an early start for anyone expecting to take more than 6 hours, so the course time limit is 8 hours if starting early. This early start is ONLY for those needing more than 6 hours, and they will disqualify you if you're significantly under that. At the meeting, we learned the rules for avoiding the DQ: stay behind the 6-hour pace team until the half way point. Then, if you're having a great day, go ahead and finish faster.
Sunday morning, I headed out just behind the 6-hour pace team. There were two pacers, one a little ahead of the other, and with my walk/run ratio, I'd catch up to the lead one during my run and fall back to the trailing one during my walk. The second pacer, Steve, was absolutely the perfect guy for the job. He's done almost 200 marathons. He'd announce everything he was doing ("I will start running at the corner, and run for 1 minute"), and at each mile marker he'd let us know we were "20 seconds ahead, but there's a hill coming up" or "30 seconds behind, but we'll make it up on the downhill." There was quite a group around him, all having a blast.
The first ten miles went great. Miles 10-15 are a steady uphill climb, but not too bad. Yay for stair training! Mile 16 is a pretty steep downhill, and I made up a lot of time there. That was where I passed the pace team, and stayed a little ahead the rest of the race. Once we got down that hill, the course heads out into an open park, where it was sunny and hot. Even there, though, I felt pretty good. Papa Runner was able to cheer me on at several places on the course, and it always gave me a boost. I saw him for the last time at mile 24, and that's when I finally started to feel less than great. My ankle, which had been acting up a few weeks ago, started to get achy, and the general stress of having run 4 miles farther than I ever had before was catching up. BUT I never had a "hitting the wall" moment, and I never missed a run interval.
I had thought I could do a 6 hour marathon on a good day. Turns out it was a great day. My final time was 5:56:27. I had signed up in the "walker" division, and it turns out I was 8th place among the walkers, 4th place for women! I'm pretty excited about that. I got a HUGE medal, too. Little Rock is known for having the biggest marathon medal, and since this year was their 10th run, it was even bigger. Amy won my "Guess the Finish Time" contest with a guess of 5:53. She just edged out Staci, who was 33 seconds over. (Sisterly rivalry!) Amy, I'll get your Panera card to you soon.
This was such an amazing experience, and I can't wait to do it again. I have to give a big Thank You to everyone who supported me before, during, and after the race. It was such fun to see the comments here and on Facebook. I don't have any marathons currently on the schedule, but I'm signed up for the half at Champaign in 8 weeks. I'm hoping to turn my unofficial PR of 2:44 into an official one. I'll be looking for more marathons with favorable time limits, maybe in the fall. And I'm still debating about attempting the Disney Goofy in January 2013 or waiting until 2014.
