Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Andy Payne Marathon


This past sunday was the Andy Payne marathon at Lake Hefner, OKC.  For the past year, I've been running in vibram 5-fingers (Bikilas).  And I was looking at this race more of a training run also.

The course was out and back, and repeat another for full marathon around Lake Hefner.  I got up at 3am, and drove to OKC for 6:30am start.  The gun went off exactly on time.  Full and half marathoners were thrown in together.

For the first segment (to the out turn around), I tried to keep slow pace, but at times, I was going way fast..and I was going to pay for it later on.  I was at 56:30 at turnaround.  Coming back was quite abit harder due to strong south winds.  I slowed down quite abit and threw in some walking.  I got back to start area in 2 hrs 3 mins.

On my second out segment, I decided to take much slower and not push it.  With strong south wind (tailwind), my quads are actually taking a beating.  At every aid station, I just stop and drank lots of water.  Temps were on the rise by mid morning.  On this segment, it took me hour and 22 minutes.  I had slowed alot.  My feet felt fine.  The wind was basically taking a toll on me now.

Coming back home on the last segment, I just slowed down and did alot of walking.  This was a good time for walking.  The winds are really fierce now.  At about mile 22, my left quad was acting up.  I walk some and run some.  This worked out pretty good.  I finally rolled into finish line at 4 hrs. 54 min. 46 sec.  I had finished my first marathon with vibram 5 fingers.  And my feet didn't really hurt much.  I'm sure that if the wind was as bad, my time would've been better too.  Everyone's time would've been better.  Nonetheless, it was a great training run.

DG productions did a wonderful job with the race.  Thanks to all volunteers at aid stations,  just been out in these winds had to been hard too... maybe even harder.

I hope to run 50K next weekend.  Happy Trails!

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