Waterloo Marathon

Being just four weeks out from the Ottawa Marathon, it was time for a dress rehearsal. So I wanted to run a low key marathon working on finding a pace and keeping on it. I also felt that running the full marathon distance would help me when I get into the later parts of the Ottawa Marathon I’ll have a much better idea of what those last miles are going to feel like. Going into the Waterloo Marathon I had planned to run 3:30 km looking to run in the 2:30 range. The start went great I was hitting 3:30’s right on for the first 2k. After that I was hitting anywhere from 3:30-35 and was really getting into a grove. After passing the 10k mark 35:10, I started getting into it a little better running several km under my 3:30 pace. At this point I was running alone. The race conditions were good temp. was great, overcast and under 10C, but there were a few long roads where the race was heading into a headwind. After passing the 30k mark I was in new territory, I didn’t feel tired at any point, but I found that the last several km my legs were feeling really heavy. I hope that with a better taper this wont factor in as much in Ottawa. I came in and finished in 2:28:20 which ended up being 3:31 km average, I think the last few K’s were a little slower, but I feel this is something I can improve on four weeks from now!