Tuesday, October 22, 2013

2013 Grand Rapids Marathon Report

The morning of the Grand Rapids Marathon , October 20 2013  weather was chilly but sunny and no rain . It rained hard the night before , with thunder and lightening. I am so glad it stopped raining . It made for a much more pleasant first marathon .  A chilly 40 degree start, but seemed perfect for running .  I started with the 3:44:00 pace group , and felt very confident .
Things were going great . I was on a great pace of 8:30 as projected . At approx. mile 4 we go over the bridges downtown . As you will see on my mile breakdown listed below on training peaks , I was on target thru 16 miles .  I have Timex GPS Trainer watch that works very well .

One of the exciting events of a race is going the Packet .  It's like a Halloween goody bag . It must be the unknown that is so fun . Anyway, we runners have this weird thing that we like to do. Lay out all the goodies and display them . So, ya gotta check this packet out:

Training Peaks has a great map and graph report . As you can see below, the actual Marathon course is on the left and my pace per mile is shown on the right.







The Finish Line was a great thing to see. Not sure how much farther I could have gone



Time to Celebrate!!!






Sunday, October 6, 2013

2013 Grand Rapids Marathon Training

The  2013 Grand Rapids Marathon will be my 1st Marathon. It seems like a dream. But the reality has set in , as my training is nearing the taper point. My 20 mile run was last weekend , and was happy with a finish time of 2:59.  I ran with the Marathon Staff today , and am looking forward to the next 2 weeks of taper.  I have projected finish time of 3:50. I know they say to just go out and have fun, and don't worry about time on the 1st Marathon, but I am feeling good on a Sub-4 hr Marathon.
I will post more information as it is available.