Flying Pig Marathon – race report

The day has finally come and gone. The Flying Pig Marathon was a great success for me and I was able to achieve this through a lot less pain and stress than the Derby Festival Marathon. Going into the pig, I didn’t really know what to expect. I took a new approach to training and I wasn’t really sure if it would pay off for me or not. You can check out how I varied my training plan here. The training plan that I followed allowed me to adequately recover before Sunday.

I decided to average a 10:00/mile pace throughout the race. I was going to bump it up in the end if I had anything left in the tank. The first 23 miles of the race went REALLY well for me. I felt like I could run forever. I had no pain, my breathing rate increased a little bit on a few of the hills, I only had a little tightness in my quads, no shin splints, I wasn’t hot at all, and the list goes on. Right around mile 24 is when I started to drop off pace a little bit. I had trouble continuing to run so I called my brother Ben and told him that I was going to beat Oprah. As an aside, my previous marathon time, 4:44 was 15 minutes slower than Oprah’s New York Marathon time and my brother insisted on bringing that up from time to time. The phone call gave me the little bit of confidence I needed to start running again. At least until mile 25.5…just before the last hill I started walking again, I came across my other brother Jeremy waiting for me. He gave me the encouragement that I needed to pick it up. I huffed it up the last hill and saw the end in sight. What a beauty it was…another 26.2 miles almost in the books. I saw my family waving and cheering along the side and it gave me such a rush that I sprinted across the finish line.

A finish like this was over a year in the making. I expected the Derby marathon to go as well as the Pig did, but I had a lot more to deal with on that day. I wasn’t able to finish up to my expectations. I knew that I would have another chance. I owed it to myself.

Flying Pig Marathon – 26.2 miles in 4:22:20