Sunday was TOUGH. The temperature started at about 63F and only climbed from there along with the sun in the cloudless sky. Occasionally strong winds, but those weren't so bad. Interestingly enough, though, I don't think the heat is hat really did me in. Not sure what really did. But after Mile 2 was finished and we started up the mild, long-ish hill at Mile 3 (which repeats at about Mile 15), I knew that I wasn't going to hit my sub-3 goal. My legs just weren't turning over fast enough and my pacer gradually just got further and further away. Unfortunately, rather than fully accept that reality and pull back the effort to something more manageable, I kept pushing as hard as possible. That certainly did me in, sapping far too much energy. By the time I got back to that hill at Mile 15, I switched from all running to run-walk -- a horrible sign for me. Instead of having a Top 3 age group finish with a sub-3 time (the original goal), I wound up finishing in 3:32:05, 6th (out of 15) in the age group. While empirically a very good time, it was nothing along the lines of what I wanted and was trained for.
In the weeks leading up to the marathon, I had become slightly anemic. That was reconfirmed with a blood test after a regular doctor's visit. It will be interesting to see how my training and upcoming virtual Marine Corps Marathon go with adding an iron pill into my diet (since my daily multivitamin actually doesn't have iron it, though I thought it did). I'm not going to be pushing for a particularly fast time, since I don't want to take a long post-race recovery time to keep training for my next live marathon, taking place in December. Depending on how everything goes, I will determine whether I aim for ~3:15 or something faster. The goal, ultimately, is to be less than 30 minutes slower than the person who comes in 1st in the age group, to hopefully have a good enough total in the Abbott WMM Age Championship standings to qualify for the 2021 championships happening in London.
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