112th Boston Marathon
Another Boston Marathon is in the books and what a race it was. Robert K. Cheruiyot won for the 4th time (something only 3 other men have done in the storied 112 year history of the Boston Marathon), the women’s race was decided by 2 seconds as Dire Tune edged out Alevtina Biktimirova. Lance Armstrong finished his third marathon 10 minutes off his hoped for 2:40 with a 2:50:50, while his ex-wife Austinite Kristin Armstrong ran a solid 3:59:24 to just nose under the four hour barrier.
I beat my goal of sub 3:20 with a 3:12:00, which is a new Boston PR, but I know I can run this course faster. After the half way point I really felt the Cheverny Marathon as my legs just didn’t have the pop that I was hoping for and I settled in for long slow decline, running the last 5k almost minutes slower than the first 5k. (19:39 vs. 25:24). Ouch!
Lance Armstrong caught up to me at mile 11.5 or so and I ran with him until mile 12 at which point I called him a sissy wished him luck and then he took off and a 2 minute negative split, so I think he owes me a favor.
The crowd was awesome as always, I high-fived hundreds of kids and really enjoyed this race. The last 5k was pretty brutal as my legs felt like lead, but I’m done and maybe next year I won’t run another April marathon before Boston.
Lance summed up how I feel as of late with this great quote:
“Every time I come out here, I swear to myself I’m going to train harder for the next one,” he said. “But I never do.”
-Lance Armstrong
I’ll have a more detailed report tomorrow.
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Nice race. Was the strategy to start fast enough that inevitably you’d get a chance to run with Lance? That was quite a fast first 5K.
Not really. My strategy is always fly and die. I was still beat up from two weeks previously so I wanted to run the first half fairly fast and then hang on. I also knew it was going to warm up quite a bit so again I wanted to put more distance in before I blew up. My best race was off a similar start where I went thru the half at 1:27 and finished with a 2:58. I just didn’t have the legs on Monday
great job, buddy.
When is your triathlon Aly?