BOSTON MARATHON. Felt good at the beginning. Tried to go out slowly. The downhill and the crowd around me who were all of similar abilities, all made keeping the pace slower practically impossible. I had been warned about the downhill for the first 15 miles of the race. I was pleasantly surprised about the many small uphills in that span as well. Although it wasn't raining at the beginning or the end of the race, it did rain off and on through the bulk of the race. My feet started feeling raw at 9 miles. And the legs started aching around mile 15. I assume it was because of the downhills. But could be because of all the walking the previous two days as well. The infamaous Newton hills start at mile 16 and go through 21. I did well on the hills. There were more of them than I was led to believe and there were downhills between them which I didn't expect and which hurt. The uphills were a blessed relief from the aching quads. I briefly wanted to quit the race around mile 20. But I killed that thought and focused on proper form the rest of the way, remembering Meb's words from last year when he was hurting too and said that he focused on his form because pace follows good form. I wasn't really prepared for the amount of downhill running after the 21st mile. The quads were in agony with a sharp pain on every downhill step. Lost a little bit of pace over the last 3 miles which were flatter but not perfectly so. Also I lost some pace because I got distracted with the crowd turning onto Hereford and Boylston Streets. I had hoped to run 7:27 pace and ended with 7:36 overall pace. Mile splits were 7:50, 7:29, 7:19, 7:23, 7:23, 7:17, 7:22, 7:27, 7:27, 7:27, 7:29, 7:28, 7:29, 7:30, 7:33, 7:22, 7:43, 7:44, 7:37, 7:52, 7:58, 7:24, 7:34, 7:39, 7:41, 7:43, actually ran 26.5 miles so don't have a good split on the final 0.2. First 1/2 in 1:38:02, second 1/2 in 1:41:01. Ran the whole thing without cramping or stopping. But those downhills were killing me. I'm not sure I ever want to run downhill again. Still met my goal of running under 3:20:00. Dream come true! It's done.
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