A little over a month ago I ran the Ocala Marathon in a bit under 3:19, or 7:35 minutes per mile.

For the Five Points of Life Marathon, I was planning for even pacing of 7:10 - 7:30 per mile, hoping to earn a Boston Qualifying time (BQ) and run a personal best. I also thought that if I had an exceptional day I might finish in the top 5 to earn some prize money.

My final time was 3:12:14, or 7:20 per mile, which improves over my previous personal best marathon at Five Points last year and accomplished all of my goals (except for prize money).

A confident start:


Photo by Five Points of Life (via Facebook)

My first half ended up being a little faster than the second half but splits were pretty consistent. I resisted the urge to push the pace. A good portion of the race included the company of Rob Robins who I know through various ways. The first part of the race was relatively cool, and even as the sun rose higher and higher we had some cloud cover until about mile 15. Heat is always a potential adversary in Florida and we started seeing the carnage of the warm day after about mile 15, with quite a few people coming back to us. We saw at least three runners ahead of us stop to walk. We plowed on at the same consistent pace and kept moving up in the standings.

Somewhere near mile 20 the aid station was located just past and sort of behind the relay exchange tent. When Rob and I ran past there was one guy standing there with one cup of water. I grabbed the cup and there was no way for Rob to get a water without turning around and running back for it. We yelled some angry words. They need to fix that layout next year and maybe give just a little more training to the aid crews. Since it was really warming up by this point I shared the water with Rob. It must have helped since Rob soon started to pull away and I wasn't able to keep up.

Miles 24 onward were very hard for me due to full sun and heat. I'm pretty sure we were warmer by the finish than this year's Olympic Trials in L.A. I pushed on and didn't completely fall apart, with my last couple miles in 7:40ish pace. I took 5 or 6 energy gels total. I took water at every aid station and what I didn't drink I poured over myself for cooling.

Congrats to Rob Robins who is an endurance machine, running his first marathon in 3:10:11. Rob finished 5th and earned some award money. I finished 6th overall and took 1st Masters.

Relieved at the finish:


Photo by BB Action Photo

More pics follow...

I finished the Ocala Marathon with a smile on my face and I was able to put on pants afterwards without triggering any muscle cramps, so I consider this to be Mission Accomplished!


Photo by EventMugShots

I finished in 3:18:51 (avg. 7:35 per mile) and 3rd place overall.


Photo by Ozzy Vidal

I had not been excited about the prospect of making another go at a hard marathon effort... in fact, I had even contemplated never running that terrible race distance ever again. Last year I made the Boston Qualifying standard (BQ) at Five Points of Life marathon here in Gainesville, but my three marathon experiences thus far had not been "fun"... Rewarding? yes, but not fun.

Thus, I was quite surprised to find that I had "marathon on the brain" a few weeks ago. I had been putting in some longer and longer runs and feeling pretty good and thinking the next bump could be close to 26 miles. Having been "betrayed" by race planners and pace calculators in the past, I am one of those runners who now feels like I need to get close to a full 26 mile long run during training. I have been plagued by leg cramping of some kind during my three previous marathons, so I also really wanted a chance to run the distance without any hard performance goals and maybe, just maybe, I could feel ok during those last few miles. With the Five Points of Life race weekend just a little over a month away, I suspected that the Ocala Marathon could be a nice opportunity.

http://ocalamarathon.com/

Read on for the rest of the report...

Last month I ran the Inaugural Alachua Lake Half Marathon which was another fine event directed by Bobby of Lloyd Clarke Sports.

After a low mileage summer (about a month and half of 20-30 mile weeks) that included a lot of Stand-Up Paddleboarding (SUP) instead of running, I have been trying to get my fitness back up. I definitely was not in top shape like last fall for the St. Augustine Half when I had already put in multiple 20 milers at this point.

At the race start we actually had a pretty large pack of runners (not including that speedster Dan Clark who quickly left us all behind). The first water stop was placed shortly after the first sharp turn on the bike path. I sped up to gain clear access to the water cups and since I gained some separation I pushed on a bit to see who would come with me.

Michael Farrell caught me and passed me and put some distance between us. At this point in the race I was being careful to keep my pace under control so I let Michael go at this point. 16-year old Jestyn Roberts caught up to me and we ended up running a huge portion of the race side-by-side.


Photo by Dana Moser

I did my best to stay on a maintainable pace (just over 6:30 per mile) and Jestyn stayed right with me. I worked back up to Michael and hung there for a bit and then put some distance between us, again Jestyn moved back up beside me.

With less than 5k to go we entered the hilly section. I thought I detected some labored breathing so I pushed again trying to get some separation and go for a 2nd place finish. Jestyn caught back up and then kept right on going, passing me, and establishing separation that I was not able to cover. I kept pushing hard trying to get back to him but could not close the gap.

My splits were fastest over the last few miles despite the hills. Previous races on this course always showed a significant slowdown during that last hilly section so I am happy with that aspect.

Finish time was 1:25:51 (avg. 6:33 per mile) which is about all I could expect given the quality of my recent workouts.

I feel good about getting 3rd place overall and taking home a Masters win.


Here is a picture of a bunch of shirtless men with our awards:

While searching for any newly released minimalist shoes in 2015, I found the Tesla BareTrek 30 Minimalist shoes on Amazon for under 30 bucks. I ordered the brightly colored Orange and Blue (Go Gators!).

My Teslas arrived in a plastic bag, tied with a little red plastic cord. No unusual or suspect ingredients, feelings, or smells.



They appear to be knock-offs of the Merrell Vapor Glove.



The only significant difference I found between the Tesla BareTrek and the Merrell Vapor Glove is the sole. The VG has stickier Vibram rubber. I didn't wear the Teslas out into the world to gauge performance on real surfaces, but the Tesla rubber feels a little slippery to the touch. The Tesla has a removable insert and standard shoe insole (reminds me of Inov-8 Bare-X Lite 150), rather than the VG which has no insert and an insole designed for the shoe to be worn sockless.


Here are more pics:

I am super late in getting this race report out. The Gate River Run 15k in Jacksonville happened in March and I see that it is now July...

This year I was seeded into the front of the first wave, with a yellow 3-digit race number, based on the quality of the half marathon performance that I submitted. It was pretty cool to be right up there at the front near the elites.

The River Run is really just an amazing, huge and well-managed event. I finished 284th out of 14918 total finishers (all genders). There was free beer and chocolate milk at the post-race celebration and this year the Publix bananas were even ripe. The weather was perfect for hanging out until the awards ceremony.

Here is a picture from after the finish with some of my Florida Track Club teammates and Gainesville runners who finished near me:


Photo by Speedy Banana

My RunFlix video of the race:




Speedy Banana was all over the course taking great photos...