On Sunday morning I ran the Lake Placid Marathon in the Adirondack mountains. I finished the race in 4:33:27, which is my fourth fastest marathon time. Given how hilly the course is, I was fairly happy with how I did and felt good in this race.
Weather for the race was overcast and cool with a slight rain, which was perfect for a marathon. The race had no pacers or clocks, and I run without a watch, so I had no idea what my pace was until I reached the finish line.
The first 5k runs through the town, and while it is downhill my split time of 27:47 means that I started a little quicker than I should have. Coming out of town was one of the bigger hills on the course, but I was still feeling good and went to my first out and back along river road. While not even a little bit flat, the river road section of the course is all rolling hills on a twisting and turning mountain road where no individual hill sticks out.
I ran back up the hill into town and reached the 14.3 mile turn around to begin the second loop at 2:20 which implies that I ran the first half of the race at exactly the pace that I wanted to.
At mile 17 the light rain turned into a bit of a downpour, which was annoying but didn’t really impact my race at all. By mile 19 the cumulative miles and hills had started to catch up to me and I really had to dig deep to keep going. There is a hill just before mile 24, and this was the only section of the course that I walked. The final half mile of the race is another uphill, but given how close I was to the finish I pushed through, and got to the end feeling pretty good about how the run went.
Between the Lake Placid and Buffalo marathons I had two races where I came out of the event feeling pretty good about how I did even if I fell just short of setting a PR. I don’t know when my next marathon will be, but my legs are feeling pretty good.
My next race will be the Webster Trail Classic later this month.