Today I ran the Fresno
marathon. Last year I ran the event
as part of the Sierra Running Company Pace Team, and this year I was able to
once again run the event as a pacer. This
year I paced the 4 hour 30 min group.
The thing that’s fun for me about pacing at a marathons is
that you get to meet a wide range of people.
I’m not naturally a talkative person, but at running events I really
enjoy talking to other runners.
I started off the race with about 20 people in my
group. Usually the weather is pretty
cool when this event is held, but today that was not the case. There also isn’t really any coverage on the
course, so if it’s warm and sunny out you’re pretty much just out in the middle
of it. The same goes when it’s cold and
windy, or raining, or… well, you get the idea.
I tried keeping my group occupied with PG rated jokes (I’ll
admit that I don’t know too many of those) and light conversation. Around mile 10 my group was down to about 7
people. At mile 13.1 my group was right
on pace. We hit the half way point at
2:14:58. Not too bad since my group goal
was 4:30:00.
I could tell that some more of my group was starting to fade
behind a little. I encouraged them the
best I could, but by mile 15 my group was down to 3 people, and by mile 16 I was
down to just 1 person. We were still
holding our pace to finish right at 4 hours and 30 mins, but I could see that
she was starting to get tired. I tried
to distract my last running from her pain and discomfort by talking to
her. She told me that this was her 2nd
marathon, and that her 1st one was last years the Fresno marathon. I asked her what her finishing time was and
she told me that it was 6 hours and 22mins.
This was crazy to me, because this meant that she was going
to finish about 1 hour and 50 mins faster than last year.
She told me she was cramping up really bad last year and
didn’t really know how to train. This year
she started training back in May and just kept slowly working hard and harder.
Around mile 21 my runner was starting to get really tired
and her stomach wasn’t feeling very good.
I pulled out some ginger I had in my bag and gave it to her. That seemed to do the trick and we were still
right on pace for a 4:30 finish, but we had a good uphill section to battle.
I kept pushing the pace, and she stayed right behind me. At mile 25 I noticed she was having a hard
time keeping up. I told her, “we just 12
more mins and this will all be over.”
She kept giving it her all, but she was starting to fade. At this point I wasn’t about to abandon my
last runner, so I did all the “You’re doing awesome!!!” and “You got this!!” speeches
I could. She told me to go ahead and
leave her… like that was really going to happen after running 25 miles with
her, and only having 1.2 miles left.
We got up to mile 26 and I told her to take off to the
finish line and run as hard as she could.
She told me “This is as fast as I could go.” I then informed her that I was going to take
off and I expected her to stay right behind me.
I crossed the finish line at 4:31:05, just a little shy of
my 4:30:00 pace I was suppose to finish in.
The girl I paced for 26.2 miles (my Garmin read 26.5 miles) finished in
4:31:07.
On a side note, my friend Chris and my niece Samantha ran
their first half marathon at this event.
The age minimum for the half is 16 years of age. After helping crew for me at The American
River Run 50 miler last April of this year, Samantha told me she wanted to do a
half marathon. Samantha turned 16 just 2
days before the half marathon, and came in 3rd place in her age
group or 16-19 year olds. My sister Kathy paced Sam, and she finished
in 2:05:34, just 39 seconds behind the 2nd place finisher for her
age group.
My buddy Chris got suckered into crewing for my friend Kyle
and I at the San Diego
100 last summer. At the time Chris didn’t
have an interest in running, but since he helped crew that day he started
running, and even crewed for me again at the Headlands 100 this year and paced
me for about 15 miles.
Now Chris and Samantha are full blown runners!!
Until next time,
Keep running!!!
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