St. George Marathon Report

I reported back to a couple of folks, so pardon me if I repeat myself.  I loved this course.  There’s a good reason for St. George to be a favorite of my good buddy Jeff and so many across the U.S.   This year, they expanded the field to 7,200 (up about 600), but they had more than 10,000 in the lottery (and all the locals get in automatically).  It was a PR for me, and I was thankful for that.

This is one well organized race.  It’s also a pretty reasonably priced top marathon.  A night in Vegas, Expo Day, Run, and back home that night.  You could make a big trip out of it.   The expo was fairly standard, easy to navigate with decent sessions. They had the pasta dinner there at the Convention Center (I stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn next door).  If I did it with a group, I would book a big condo on FRBO.  Nothing is that far away in St. George.

Busses headed up the mountain at 4:00am for the 6:45am start.  There, at the top, was hot chocolate, Starbucks, and about 8o bonfires.  They take bags down for you, ready when you get down.  I went up with Ron, my roommate, for the marathon.  Lots of super friendly folks hanging around the fires to get warm.

The race was not just a bunch of downhill running as I had planned for.  While, on average, it drops about 100 ft. per mile (nearly 2,600 ft in total), it also goes up more than 600 ft.  So, on average, it is a 2% grade down.  There were points where the road signs indicated a 6% and 8% downhill grade and, of course then a few big hills to climb.:

After listening to speakers, my strategy was to go out relatively slowly (compared to my goal pace) for the first 14 miles and then run a big negative split.  Right strategy I think. 

It’s dark at the start, 6:45am.  By mile 5, there’s plenty of light.  Downhill, but with rolling hills.   The physical beauty was really great.  I mean really quite spectacular.  At mile 7 there is nasty 1 mile climb (~255 ft.) where I slowed down about 60 seconds per mile .  Then, you turn a corner into some of the most compelling vistas on the course.  At mile 10 or 11 you hit a 2 mile uphill stretch.  By mile 14, you are hitting nice even drops and then some nice hills up past 20.  If your legs are still with you (more on that in a minute), you can really cruise much of the rest of the course with just a few rises.

The downhills were fun, until I started to cramp at 17.  By the time I got to 19 I was getting worried.  By 23, I had to slow to over 8 the rest of the way.  Every time I tried to speed up, I was hit with a stabbing cramp in my right calf.  I think people thought I had Tourette’s (sp?) Syndrome and slowed to 8:30’s for 24 & 25.  Not a fun part of the run.

 

Anyhow, it was a great run and I was happy to come away with a PR.  3:13:40 with an average pace of 7:23/mi.