Lake Geneva Marathon

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

OKay, the good, the bad and the ugly are in, and I can start writing a reasonably coherent report. (Hey, the blog is Random Brain Dribbles, not "Deliberated Thought" or something like that. You get what you paid for here.)

The Bad
I finished. Technically, it was a huge improvement over my last marathon (Disney in January), but then again, this time it wasn't 100% humidity at the start, nor was I wearing a hydration pack, and, oh yeah, it wasn't my third race in three days.

My official finish time was 4:05:34. That doesn't sound too shabby, until we get to

The Ugly

Let's look at some splits, shall we?

Mile 1: 8:14
Mile 2: 7:37
Mile 3: 8:00
Mile 4: 7:51
Mile 5: 8:03
Mile 6: 7:57
Mile 7: 8:50
Mile 8: 8:02
Mile 9: 8:10
Mile 10: 8:23
Mile 11: 8:19
Mile 12: 8:14
Mile 13: 8:42
Mile 14: 8:35
Mile 15: 8:06
Mile 16: 9:16
Mile 17: 10:01
Mile 18: 9:14
Mile 19: 10:34
Mile 20: 11:27
Mile 21: 12:55
Mile 22: 12:03
Mile 23: 12:49
Mile 24: 9:31
Mile 25: 12:18
Mile 26: 10:19
The final .2: 2:04

I think it's pretty obvious where the wheels started to come off, looking at the splits. It actually happened a bit earlier than that, however. See, about mile 15-16, there is The Hill. And yes, it deserves the capital letters. It's long, it's nasty, and it just goes on and on. And it is preceded by it's little brothers, and the big brothers come along after it.

Now, in all fairness, you are warned about this in advance. It just didn't really sink in until you keep going up, and up, and up, and then down, and up, then down, then up, then down, and so forth, for mile after mile after mile.

I eventually wound up going to a run/walk routine, and having to take stops to stretch and try to get my quads and calves into some sort of co-operation.

The Good
(No, they aren't in order. Who cares?)

The course is beautiful, aside from the stretch where you run alongside (and I mean, alongside, as in, on the shoulder) of a highway. The crowd support is pretty slim, but there were a lot of informal aid stations set up by some local residents. (I had one couple offer me ibuprofen or Tylenol told them end - I declined, but I did ask about the availability of beer.)

I ran this on almost no training - my "long runs" were pretty much 12-13 miles long. (In my defense, I found out how short those trails were when it was too late to make up for it.) I was sore that evening, but not too much, and, despite the hills, I could tackle stairs the next day without more than a slight grimace.

It still counts for Wisconsin, and, if nothing else, I should (hopefully) do a bit better at Sunburst at the end of the month. After all, that one is flatter.