Cowtown Marathon

I left yesterday for the drive to Ft. Worth. This is about a 180 mile trip from Oklahoma City. I was doing this marathon on the cheap. I was staying at Motel 6 for $40.00. Got to the hotel around 3, checked in, then headed downtown to the expo. It wasn't bad, it was in tents and there were a fair number of exhibits. I got my bag, bib, and shirts ( 1 cotton, 1 technical) then headed back to my hotel. Located a grocery store, and bought a sandwich. Ate, set out my clothes and relaxed for a while before retiring around 10. Around 1 I was awakened by the sound of "open the door or we're going to kick it in." I looked out and the police were at the room next door. Luckily Sergio opened the door. They were there for about 30 minutes before they took Sergio away. No more drama, and I went back to sleep. I got up around 5 and decided to walk about a block to a C-Store for coffee. Brrrr, cold and windy. About 35 degrees, and wind gusts to 35 mph. How should I dress? I decided to go with my original plan, short sleeve under and long over, and shorts. Gloves and while I didn't plan on wearing my jacket, I couldn't locate the bag drop, and it was 5 minutes to the start. Oh well, wear it then tie it around my waist when I warmed up. That worked, and I ended up needing it longer than I had anticipated. While it did warm up some, the wind keep the chill factor up. I had lined up behind the 4 hour pacers. While I didn't plan on following them, that was my only goal for this run. We started, and it took a couple of minutes to cross the start. When we were able to run, I started trying to hold 9 minute miles or less. This was a moderately hilly run, and I would let the pace follow the course. Slow down uphill, pick it up downhill. Things were going well until around mile 12 when my right knee started hurting, and my right calf got real tight like it was going to cramp up. This was about the same time we left the road and entered a park path that was pure concrete and I could feel it hurting the moment we hit it. I tried to run through it, but it hurt when I tried to hold pace, so I decided rather than injure myself, I'd just back off and take it on in at a slower pace. About this time I realized that I had Endurolytes, and hadn't been taking them. I took one every 10 minutes for 30 minutes, and then started feeling better and loosening up. I then started pulling down the pace again. While I knew I had about a 2 minute cushion in chip time over gun time I decided I wanted to break four on the clock, not just chip time. This meant that I had to drop my pace a bit and fortunately was able to do that. I was feeling good and picking off a lot of runners who by this time had hit the wall or just had to slow their pace. As I got nearer the finish line I began to know that I would reach my goal. As I approached the finish line, I could see it counting to four hours. I had about 20 seconds to beat the clock. About that time this guy starts trying to pass me and beat me to the finish line. All the incentive that I needed to sprint past him and beat the clock. Final stats, 3:59:51 Gun time, 3:57:54 Chip. This is a well run marathon, but I have no plans to run it again.