American Discovery Trail Marathon - 4 Sept 2006

American Discovery Trail Marathon (Colorado Springs, CO)
47th Marathon
9/4/2006
10th Place
3:08:44
The ADT Marathon starts at America the Beautiful Park, near downtown Colorado Springs at an elevation of 5,980'. This entire race is run on the ADT, half of which is paved and the other half is dirt. Luckily, I knew they course even though I had never run it before. I also got some good advice from last year's winner (who defended, running 6 minutes faster in 3:16) Tania Pacev. She told me to take it easy until 18 miles. That sounded easy enough, so I decided to take her advice. It seemed like I ended up having three gears. The first low gear I used during the first mile (run in 8:02). The next cruising gear I used from miles 2-16 (I didn't wait until 18). During this stretch, I hit all most all the miles between 7:15 and 7:30 (with one in 7:06). I hit the halfway mark in 1:37:00, which was right where I wanted to be. No, there is one thing that I must say about this stretch. The course goes south on the ADT for 2 miles to a turnaround. This stretch is all downhill, losing 100 feet in elevation. At this turnaround, you then run north on the ADT until the 15.5 mile marker. This entire stretch is gradually uphill to the 14 mile marker. You gain all most 500 feet and then it gets fun. From 14 to 17, the course is on the New Santa Fe Trail, which is very rolling, with some short, steep ups and downs that finally go away between the 17 and 18 mile marker. This is why Tania told me to wait until 18 miles before pushing. I didn't wait as I started to push at the turnaround, switching into my third gear, where I ran from miles 16-20. Since the majority of this was back down the hill, I could really get going (since I had held back on the climb to this point). I ran the last 10 miles between 6:40 and 7:00 pace, running it in 68:20. I finished maintaining that pace (6:51 last mile) in 3:08:44. I was really excited about this effort because I have not felt that good in a marathon in a long time. Being able to push for the last 10 miles was really good. One thing that helped was we got to run the last 6 miles with the back end of the half marathon (it started an hour later and ran out and back going north) so we could pass people. All in all this was a great race. The miles seemed in the right place, the course was half dirt, I got a 30 minute massage at the finish as well as pizza and beer (always love that). The only bad thing that happened to me was that the port- a-johns at mile 7 and mile 11 were still locked so I could use them!