This is my first semi-competitive race in about 10 years. I hadn't trained as much as I would have liked (I ran about twice a week). This was also my first distance race longer than 5-10K.
My goal for this race was two-fold: to finish strong and to go as fast as I could without dying early. I feel like I accomplished it. For the first 3.2 miles I was just under 6:30 pace. After the course flattened out, I slowed a bit. By 9 miles my legs were cramping a bit, and I had some knee and foot pains. After a mile my knees were better, but my legs and feet ached to the end. I wasn't as familiar with the course as I should have been, so I didn't push it through the end (I didn't want to speed up the last mile to find out there were 2 miles left). If I did it again, I would have pushed a bit harder through the last 4 miles, but I learned.
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