How not to run a marathon

I'm back from the San Antonio Marathon on Sunday. Weather was perfect--about 40 degrees at the start and mid-70s at the end, Ernie Wright, my training partner and I arrived at the start about 20 minutes before the gun. Since we had projected 5 hr. finishing times, we were in corral 22. They start the corrals about a minute a part, which meant it would be twenty to twenty-five minutes before we reached the starting line. I suggested we just duck into one of the earlier corrals, which we did. Corral 11.

The trouble with getting into a closer corral is that we were surrounded by people who ran at a faster pace and it was too tempting to keep up with them. Keep up, we did. At least for the first half. My average time per mile in the first half were:
10:10--5k
10:30--6 miles
10:41--10 miles
11:00 halfway
I should have been on a 12 minute pace from the start. See what's happening? Now it gets bad.
11:28--17 miles
12:11--20 miles and I'm out of gas
13:14--24 miles
13:29--finish
I finished the race in 5:53:30, my worst time ever. I can't say this was my most painful race. I can think of four that were more painful, but those last 6 miles, just lifting my feet was a huge effort.

I didn't expect to run fast, because this was my first race since my foot surgery, but I should have run it smarter. On the whole, it was a great race. The events were well-organized, the bands (30 of them) and the cheer squads (a lot) were great. They stayed the whole time and really kept us moving. The workers at the water stations were great.

I will definitely do this race again, but next time I'll run it smarter. Soon, I'll post a picture. Now I have to figure out when the next one will be.