Sun, 18 Sep 2011

Fox Valley Marathon 2011

This morning, I was one of a mere 900 or so marathoners in the second (?) annual Fox Valley Marathon, along with a 20 mile training race (as Chicago's big marathon is coming up) and a half marathon. This all took place along the Fox river, which is about an hour west of Chicago.

The race went well enough. I had been racing twice a year at this distance, but took a break after running with some minor injury and generally not too well (see e.g. my writeup from last year's Boston and Chicago marathons). So I wasn't even sure I'd run one this year at all, but the bug got me again when two friends signed up for this, and off we went to train over the summer. So with a few more miles from training, I was pretty antsy and went out too fast as usual, and paid with an as-usual slower half and few short walking breaks past mile 20. But I beat the hope-for target time of 3:25 quite handily with a 3:19:03 -- or a 7:36 min/mile pace. Which (as I noted in a quick post to Google+ started right after the race, and since edited/expanded -- prods to Google+) should hopefully get me back to Boston next spring.

/sports/running | permanent link