Phoenix Marathon 2013

Well this last Saturday was the 1st annual Phoenix Marathon.  Last year the organizers had a 1/2 Marathon and 10K.  This year a full Marathon was added.  What a great event!  The race was extremely well organized and well attended.  2,000 martahoners and 1,800 1/2 Marathoners?  Great expo prior to the event at bag pickup and even better after the event.  Great food, great volunteers and great support.  It is a Saturday race, which I really appreciate.  The course is fast starting out at Usery Pass and weaving its way to Riverview in Mesa.  It is really a great course!

This was my first full marathon.  I had signed up a while back in anticipation of IMAZ.  Not that running a full marathon is a prerequisite for an Ironman but in my mind, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.  The race was far enough ahead of IMAZ anyway so I really looked at it as a kind of training day.  As for IM 70.3 Oceanside one month for today, my rationale was it would give me enough time to recover for that also.

The red line on the map (hard to see as it is) was the course.  Net downhill.  The race organizers wanted a race that was a Boston Qualifier, downhill and on Saturday instead of Sunday.      For me, it makes it a perfect race.  It is also a great time of year with a lot of people in the valley for Cactus League.

The pre-race expo was held at Tempe Marketplace at the Roadrunner Sports in the parking lot.  It was excellent!  Full and very well organized.

This was the finish line setup at the pre-race expo.

 This is me during the race.  I have to say, it hurt but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  I tried to do a negative split but planned on about a 4:30 time, given that was what I had trained for.  My goal was to train, really, and have fun.  At the same time, I wanted to test my nutrition, which ended up being bang on.

Despite trying for a negative split, the course is so fast at the beginning it was very difficult to hold back.  I kept trying to slow down to "save my legs" but the grade of the course would easily pull you faster and it didn't seem like you were exerting a lot of energy.  I ran the 1/2 Marathon in 2:10 or so which is my best time ever....

My time was 4:24:46 officially although we were stopped a couple of times to let congested traffic go through at some stop lights.  This was a 10:06/mile pace.  I was 707 overall.  56/80 in my age group.  401 in my gender.

Driving home after accomplishing another goal of mine.  Great race!

DT