Day 187
I still have the feeling of that was the best marathon I ran. MCM was really a pick me up marathon for me. I really needed that. I had a period of not finding the joy in running. I signed up Baltimore Marathon and it was kind of bringing me back to running. Marine Corps Marathon really fanned the flame.
I came out of it feeling that was how a marathon should be. Big, Loud, and badass.
I wrote about the race already. I think the rain and storm really made me appreciate the race more. We kept thinking how miserable it was but think of all the volunteers out there standing in the rain with us.
I enjoyed the special challenge of running among the slower crowds for two third of the race. But that made me looked so much better. We were catching up from behind. We were running 2-3 minutes faster than everyone. We were blazing fast.
The rain was refreshing on a hot day! Ah, flood street! We did it. We ran through like a boat skipping on top of waves.
The pace signs and mile signs situation was hilarious. I am sure they can do better next year. The scope was couple thousands of us were clueless once we came out mile 9 and merged back the regular marine marathon course. They only post the ultra mile every 10K and a lot of us have no clue how to convert it back to mile to find our min mile pace. I know my 5K time was 35 minutes. And so 10K should be 70 minutes. So every 10K, I have to check my time and do some math. My goal was to finish under 360 minutes (nice round number of 6 hours). 35 times 10 brings me to 350 minutes. So I know I was running a bit faster and I could afford about 30 sec correction on each mile. I banked my minutes and used them on my water stop.
It was funny, suprised kind of funny when people see the 4 hr pace group catching up from behind and finished with the 4:30 pace group. What they did not realized was the 4 hour group was pacing the ultra and they ran and extra 4.8 miles. So it was pretty good that they could finished with the regular 4:30 marathoners. same with me, I was with the 6 hour group and we finished with the 5:20 people. A lot of people were feeling despair when they saw the 6 hours people passing them (and they did not realize we were the ultra people). I am sure they will fix this issue next year. They already said they will have different color pace sign and with big red word saying Ultra on them to distinguish the ultra pace from the regular marathon pace.
In awe 