Last Saturday, I finished 208 out of 1885 finishers at the Fargo Marathon with an official time of 3:28:42, which is a new PR for me! This is only about a minute and 16 seconds faster than last months previous best in Abilene, but is still a PR! Last time I broke 3:30 it was really tough and I felt like I had to fight and almost 'redline' to make it. This time it felt like cruise control the whole way and was 'relatively' easy. I had a one spot were it felt tough (mile 16-17.5) but I was able to maintain pace. The last 3 miles I was only able to pick up the pace by about 10-20 seconds, running about 7:40ish miles.
It rained hard for the first 7 miles, sprinkled and misted for the next 5 or so and then the sun came out and it got hot and sunny and humid and windy (some gale force winds from the south) towards the end. The course was very nice with beautiful homes. I ran the whole time with the 3:30 pace team until mile 23 when I went on ahead a bit to 'see what I could do'. The course crossed the Red River into Moorehead, Minnesota for a couple of miles as well. The FargoDome Finish was pretty fun.
I still would have 18 minutes left to cut to have a Boston Qualifying time but I feel like I could cut off 5 minutes if I ran it again today. We're still talking 45 seconds per mile - it's going to be tough but I think it's possible so I'm going to keep working at it.
My mile splits at Fargo were very consistent until I sped up about mile 23: 20M 2:39:54, 13.1M 1:44:58, 10K 0:49:31.
Event photos at (bib number 1297): http://www.asiorders.com/view_user_event.asp?EVENTID=59919&BIB=1297&S=230&PWD=
My aunt Linda went with me to cheer me on and was very happy!
My finish line photo with Linda about 10 minutes after finishing.
Linda found this Space Aliens restaurant with Earthlings welcome that she loved so we took a picture at it!
