Saturday June 11th was the inaugural event for the Carmel Marathon. Having had my first full marathon in January and a half marathon in both April and May, I decided to run the half-marathon for fun. I ran the race as a “keep the momentum going” kind of event and to have something to train for in the mean time until I started my official program for my next full-marathon which is coming up in November.

The weekend of events was pretty awesome! Not only was the course relatively flat and fast, but the full-marathon was a Boston Qualifier (BQ) AND the RRCA Indiana State Marathon Championship.

Now I’m not ready for a BQ effort yet, but it’s pretty cool to come to a BQ race and see who shows up! The weekend of events also included the USATF 8K championship so this truly was a place for elites!

I however did not go for another PR. Instead I chose to run the first few miles with a buddy of mine who was doing his first full-marathon. Those were the easiest 3.5 miles of the day.  The rest of the time I just sat back in my ~10min pace and enjoyed the scenery. I even conversed a little with the group of runners I was pacing with and it always seemed like a group of 5-10 runners were near each other first one person leading then another. It was fun to motivate total strangers along the way and have them motivate me in return. I finished the race in 02:19:26. That’s 14 minutes slower than my best half-marathon time, but not too bad for taking it easy! It was a fun morning run!

Since the half and full-marathon courses intersected at several points I did get a chance to see the leader of the full-marathon around mile marker #8 being lead by a police officer on a motorcycle and two volunteers on bikes.  That guy was booking it!! He finished his full-marathon before I finished my half. Can you say “running since birth”? One day I may get there…okay close to there…okay just closer anyway. 🙂

As I said before, the course was “relatively flat”. Indiana is known for being a flat state or at least the upper 2/3rds of it….down to where the glaciers stopped a few centuries ago.  Of course as has become the standard, I manage to find race courses in flat states that are anything but flat.  This course had plenty of gently rolling hills. Perhaps not as bad as Kansas (Yes…Kansas. See my previous posts), but still plenty of ups and downs as compared to the races I’ve ran at Disney, The Indy Mini-Marathon and other races in Indiana.

Up next is The Indianapolis Monumental Marathon November 5th. I start the FIRST Training Program Tuesday and will be putting in the miles according to that plan for the remainder of the year. The only adaptation will be the addition of the occasional weekend double long day (Sat & Sun) to prepare me for the Goofy Challenge in January. After January I have some decisions to make. Looks like an Ultra-Marathon is in my future for next year. I’m going to go for a 50K which is 31.0685 miles. Not too much further than a full-marathon, but farther than the walk back to your car!  🙂

The next decision is “What’s Next?”. That will be fun to figure out!

Happy Training!

-Brian