1 down, 4 to go

As many of you know I, with Jilian and Robert, went out to Phoenix this past weekend to run the Rock & Roll Marathon.(R&R AZ) I am going to post in two segments to hopefully make it slightly more digestible. This one is about the race itself.

This is probably the best marathon that I have gone to so far. The course started in Phoenix, wandered up into Scottsdale and then meandered back down to Tempe for the finish at the ASU Sun Devil stadium. The was a measurable elevation change up into Scottsdale but the change was so gradual as to seem flat over the entire course. This is the first race that did not take us into a park and/or and industrial park/district. That is very important because in those areas the crowd support drops off considerably. Since this one avoided those areas the crowds were great for the entire distance. I can not overstate the helpfulness of good crowds. Overall I would strongly recommend this as a first timer race.

I started off very badly with both legs not feeling ‘right’. Sometimes it just takes a while to settle into a run so when I was four miles into this and still not comfortable I stopped to walk a bit. After that stop I felt great. The rest of the run went very well with me stopping every four miles for a short stroll. I felt great the entire time and finished tired but still running comfortably. Dare I say that I actually enjoyed running 26.2 miles? Maybe. :) Over all I averaged a 9:49 pace and finished in 4hours and 17minutes.