There's something about Bass Pro!

The overview:

I love running 2 marathons off of one training cycle, and my hometown race Bass Pro was #2 for this season!

Based on how I was feeling going into the race, I lined up with the goal of placing as high as possible with an effort of less than 100%, if possible.  My friend and training buddy Casey was also going into her second marathon of the season with a similar attitude.  We both wanted to keep our times under 3:00, and we thought the perfect day would be us running side-by-side for 26.2, finishing holding hands while tying for overall female in 2:58-2:59, and splitting the 1st + 2nd place prize money 50/50.  We also knew that while it's rare any women run sub-3:00 at Bass Pro, it was possible that others would be in the mix and we'd have to run faster to try for the win we hoped for.  

Our "speed limit" for going out was 6:30 pace; if another woman went out faster than our hoped for 6:45 pace, we would go out at 6:30 pace and gauge from there.  From the gun, a woman jumped into the lead, so Casey and ran together and with a couple of men at ~6:30, not far behind her for the first ~5 miles of the race.  When we pulled up with the woman (Jacqui), we invited her to join our group and the three of us ended up spending most of the race together!  We had the lead female cyclist with us, and he and another cyclist kept telling us that the women's race had never been so intriguing - usually there is a clear and dominant leader.  The three of us joked, bonded, and laughed for miles.  At various times, one person was slightly ahead or another slightly behind, but there was no clear leader for most of the race.  I think it went back and forth on who felt the best and who felt the worst - who was pushing and who was hanging on.  I really couldn't get a read on how the race was going to play out, though during my feeling good spurts I'd think "I'm going to win this marathon" and during my rough spots I'd think "third is still podium!"  I also thought that if Casey won, I was still winning since I've been coaching her this year.

Top 3

When the three of us passed mile 20 side by side, it seemed like everyone felt good enough that anything could happen.  I train with Casey so I know she is strong, and we'd learned that Jacqui was an Ironman Triathlete, meaning her endurance is insane.  Around mile 21, Casey dropped back a bit, and after Jacqui and I passed 22 I felt her absence.  Jacqui and I were both fighting through that end-of-the-marathon fatigue, and passed mile 23 side-by-side.  Shortly after, I really started feeling it in a way that kind of snuck up on me, and I had to fight to maintain contact with Jacqui.  She opened up a small gap on me going through a muddy tunnel, and as hard as I tried I couldn't close it.  I played mind games with myself and tried surging back, but my legs weren't responsive.

Anything can happen at the end of the marathon, but as the gap grew and the distance to the finish decreased, it became more and more likely I was taking home the silver.  I felt like I didn't have much in reserves, and the end of this race can be a trip for me - the course is incline, turn, incline, turn, repeat for the final 2 miles.  I've had both strong finishes and struggles for those 2 miles, and this year was the latter.  I did what I could to get in as quickly as I could, and managed a big smile when I heard Jon cheering for me on the final stretch.  There was no finishing clock, so I didn't know what my time was, but I was hopeful I'd finished under the age 41 state record of 2:57:00.  I did, in an official time of 2:54:26 - especially fulfilling after I kept missing the half record and narrowly missed the 10k record!  Missouri keeps single age state records, but my time is the fastest of any age 40+ so I'm calling it the masters record too.

The man behind me, Lukasz, ran
most of the race with us too! 

I'd have loved to have run faster (wouldn't we all, always?!), but I knew before the race started that I didn't have a 2:4x in my legs for this one.  I stand by running two marathons off of one cycle, and I'll explain more thoughts in a later post.  This was my fastest Bass Pro time by almost 5 minutes, and also consecutive sub-3 #14 for me.  Be thankful for what you have, and you'll end up having more - this is a lesson I remind myself of often and have difficulty practicing in relation to my running - but it is so true!

Many in my running group had fantastic results at Bass Pro events, which sweetened the day.  Casey was 3rd overall female in the marathon in 2:56 (her second fastest marathon ever, 6 weeks after her PR), Colin was first overall in the half in 1:15 (huge PR), Rebecca was second overall female in the half in 1:24 (huge PR), Amy won her age group in the half, and Abby and Sean got in good half efforts during the throes of marathon training.

Official results are here.

Two news articles about the race are here and here.

My Strava activity is here.

More details:

• Pre-Race
• First Half 
• Second Half
• Reflections 
• Backstory (posted before the race)

We take this stuff very seriously