[ewth8tr]

Originally Posted by Runner Coug

I ran the Pocatello Marathon this past weekend, the one I was doing in honor of the soldier that died in Iraq. As far as that aspect, it went great. The newspaper found out about it, and I was one of a handful of runners who were profiled in the paper on Sunday.

As far as the race goes, I started strong, and then slammed into the wall at mile 21. I ran the first half of the race in 1:49, and felt really good about turning in a 3:45 effort, which would be a couple minute PR for me. Then I developed a quarter sized blister on my right heel which filled up with blood and popped. So the last 5.2 miles took a long time. It turned out that the second half took me 2:04, and my time overall was 3:53. Good enough for 69th place out of 243 runners, 8th in my age group out of 19. So not a total loss, but a bit disappointing.

So I am done with race training for at least the rest of this year. It's going to be running for fun 3x a week, mountain bike riding and hitting the gym for some classes with my wife. Around the first of next year I'm planning on getting some coaching and see if I can get my marathon time down a bit.

Wow, congrats on even finishing in that situation.