Boulder Striders

Hello Everybody. So this was marathon number three for me. My A+ race would be to break 4 hours but I would be happy with just finishing faster than my previous best of 4:03:01. Of course after seeing the weather the day before the race, rainy and wind gusts of about 30-40 mph I was prepared to readjust expectations. I will start out by saying this, I really lucked out with some perfect weather. Temps in the mid 50's from the start to the end of the race and no wind to speak of and no rain. This is not the norm in Ireland from what I hear. No need to adjust expectations due to conditions.So I started out in the 3:45 to 4:15 corral. Well behind the 4 hour pace balloon but it was too difficult to weave my way up to that group. The first three miles of the race were really crowded as we were running in the actual city of Dublin with some 10,000 people. One of the first turns was actually a 90 degree right turn which brought all the runners to a slow walk. Yikes! Because of my handy GPS watch and the lap button I knew just how slow the first couple of miles were. Number 1-10:36, Number 2-9:05, Number 3-9:31. Yikes! For a finish of 4 hours, the average pace should be 9:09. So after the first 3 miles, I was about 2 minutes slower than I should have been.