Portland Marathon 5 miler and marathon pacing

Portland Marathon 5 mile Splits:

Mile one: 6:09
Mile two: 6:15
Mile three: 7:08
Mile four: 6:34
Mile five: 5:53

This post could also be titled: "The day I stopped trusting Joe Dudman" :-) More on that later.


After grabbing a ride down with my buddy Scott, who was running the marathon, I got to watch the marathon start and then wait for my race to start at 7:45 am.
I had a great run today in near perfect temperatures. My finish time is not what I had dreamt of but then the course was tougher than I thought it would be with much more climbing. If you look at the splits you can see the miles that were impacted. Funny how you can never quite make up for the uphill with the downhills :-)
Back to Joe Dudman...he is an amazing and fast local runner who blogs. He put a preview up about the 5 mile course.
Joe talks about a "...1/3 of a mile of climbing".
So when the hill started, I just thought, OK, I can dig deep for 1/3 of a mile and push through a little hill. Well, not sure how Joe measures his miles, but he needs some calibration :-) The hill went on for at least 1.25 miles and had some serious impact on my average pace.
I did shake Joe's hand at the end of the race so all is forgiven :-) Seriously, check out the blog, lots of great info on the Oregon running scene.

Anyways, enough excuses. I am really happy with my place, both overall and in my age group. Now if only I would have dropped 4 seconds to get in to the 31s. Silly not to look at my watch for that last bit.... at least I beat Sean's 10km (6.22 mile) time! Great fun race.

After finishing my race and picking up my clothes, I started running back on the marathon course to meet our friend Kris and pace her to the finish.
It was about 3 miles of running until I hit the first place runner. He was flying and looked to be in control of the race. I think he was at least half a mile in the lead at this point on the nice downhill. But then I look at the results and it shows he placed second. Good lesson: Never, ever give up. There is always more race when anything can happen.

As I continued to run back, it was inspiring to see all these great runners digging deep to pound out the last miles. I saw Kami Semick leading the women. She is an amazing ultra-runner as well as having the foot speed to win with 2:45 at a road marathon!

I met up with Kris around mile 19.5. She was running just behind the 3:35 pace group but needing to focus to continue to make it to the finish with a Boston time. We synced up and headed to the finish. At mile 21, Trisha and Ronda cheered, took pictures and provided gels.

Finally the flat miles through the college grounds ended and we could stretch it out on the nice downhill by the Adidas campus. Kris did amazing on all the downhills to keep herself on track. The uphills, as always in the last part of a marathon were tough, but I tried to help by encouraging Kris to change up her stride to a shorter faster cadence and put those arms to use. Soon we were up and over the Broadway Bridge and back to some sweet downhill, around the corner and spit out back on Naito Parkway for the last ~2 miles of fun.

The 3:40 pace group edged up to us and Kris pushed and stayed even with them till I ducked out at the mile 26 corner. She finished with a great Boston time and likely she will write up more details on her blog. Thanks for letting me be part of your day Kris.

So an amazing day of running with racing, a recovery run and a pacing run to total ~18 miles all before 11:00 am.

Then Trisha picked me up just in time to hit church and catch my friend Brian's first sermon...with the weighty topic of suffering. Brian did a great job of "preachin' it" and challenging everyone with God's words. He will be able to do great things once Natasha and Brian hit the ground running in Honduras with the Micah Project.
Finished with a lazy afternoon hanging with the kids.

Now I just want to sleep and think about the next race / adventure. Not too long of a wait...Trisha and I are bike riding a 75 miler next Sunday on a tandem...life is good!