Notes:
It's Tuesday and I'm still alive! I have yet to unpack, either, as I have been swamped with work ever since returning yesterday.

Anyway, the marathon; talk about a humbling experience! As you can see, it's not the best finish (worst than my Chicago time) but looking at the bright side, I have that much more leeway to beating it! That being said, I plan to do more marathons. Crazy, huh? I need to train more, though — LOL! Read on if you want to find out…

"What Went Wrong"

1. I drank coffee an hour before my race
To coffee drinkers, this might not seem odd; but I hardly drink coffee. I thought that having a small cup of joe might wake me up — and it did. It gave me the boost to jump off the starting line and run… for 6 miles without stopping! LMAO. That's good if I were only running a 10K but this was a marathon.

2. I didn't follow my walk/run breaksI trained to run every 6 minutes and walk for a minute. Per my post above, I ran for 6 miles continuously, 'drafting' behind the pace leader who ran at about an 11:30-12:00 minute/mile pace. A few steps after the 10K mark, I slowed down to my normal speed but it was too late — I was deflated! Talk about being out-of-shape!

3. My watch diedI partly blame my watch for the whole pace and walking fiasco. I depended on this thing so much during my training that when it failed me during THE marathon, I was, well, lost. It was an hour after I started that I realised I had a mobile phone on me and it had a stopwatch on it >_< D'oh! Anyway, I couldn't reset the darn watch and yah, ended up doing what I did (see #2). Still, I should've brought a backup watch and placed it on the opposite wrist.

4. I carried two water bottlesOne was my 24 fl.oz Gatorade bottle and the other was a pint of bottled water. Again, I didn't train holding two bottles and let me tell you summat — at mile 15, these things weighed as if they were 100 lbs (45kgs)! AHHH. My shoulders and the base of my neck still hurt because of this strain. Stupid me. >_<

5. I gave up too earlyI thought I was so behind, that I resolved myself to finishing it over 6 hours. Guess what? Had I not given up and simply walked miles at a time, I would have made it — and bested my previous time. Again, I'm blaming it on my watch. Well, I should've noted the clock time, as well. I'll keep these in mind.

Those are the main things I can think of for now. Some stats:

ChipTime: 6:26:02
ClockTime: 6:36:15
Pace: 14:44 minutes/mile

Splits:
10k (6.21mi): 1:13:53
Half (13.1mi): 2:52:04
33K (21mi): 4:58:00

This is what my watch looked like the entire 26.2 miles: