My strategy was to run with the 3:40 pace group, if I felt good, for half of the marathon. If I still felt good at mile 13.1, then I was going to slowly increase my pace until the finish. To qualify for Boston (3:15), I would have to run at 7:26min/mi. There's no way I was going to run that, but I am curious to know if I could sustain that pace for a mile or two after mile 20.

Started with the 3:40 pace group, but I don't remember seeing them after the 1st mile marker. Somewhere around mile 8 I found the 3:30 pace group. It must of motivated me because I ran the next 3 miles faster than 7 min/mile. I caught the 3:20 pace group at mile 12, and I stayed with them until just after mile 18.

Maybe I should of stuck to the plan of running with the 3:40 group for half the race. Maybe I should of started with a 3:20 or 3:30 pace and kept it. Maybe I should of trained more, tapered better, not rode my first century last Sunday, or maybe it's supposed to hurt that bad. Anyway, my quads got really tight, and it was becoming hard to run at mile 18. I stopped to stretch, and I walked, but neither helped. The 3:30 pace group that seemed so slow when I saw them at mile 8, was a lot faster at mile 24 when they passed me.

You may notice that the distance on my Garmin is not 26.2 miles. Aside from margin of error, there was a detour because of a fire that happened the night before. Last Sunday I did my first century ride, and I missed a loop that caused me to only ride 93 miles. I consider the marathon detour my punishment.
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Even though I didn't stick to my plan, which probably caused me more pain than I needed, I'm really excited about the result. It was great weather, the crowd was great. My mother, father, wife, child, and brother were all there. Am I doing it next year? No way! There's too many other marathons that I want to do. Chicago, Marine Corps, Disney, maybe even Boston someday.