Miles to go …

4 hours, 6 minutes, 57 seconds and a pace of 9:25/mile.

This is what it took me finish the Metro Silicon Valley marathon, my first one. Almost 7 minutes behind my targeted goal but a PR. A hamstring pull on mile 18 & 23 completely slowed me down.  The complete results are available here. I read somewhere "After running a marathon, the only thing that does not hurt is your pride" and I fully realized that yesterday. The fastest male was 2:42:40 and the female was 3:07:25.

This was not possible without all the wishes from family and friends. Especially Sanjay, Satish, Dhiru and kids Ankit, Shubhankar, Vaibhav, Varun and Prateek who all ran along the last mile with me and those who could not support me as front runners. And of course the faithful and constant support of my wife and son for the 5 months of practice. I’m here because of this support system and now it’s time to payback morning time to family (which I’ve not been able to do recently because of early morning runs),  for at least next few weeks until I begin my training again for the next marathon.

Watch a 23 second video clip of run with them here. The kids were really enthusiastic and enjoyed running along. Check out the flickr slideshow.

Although there were volunteers scattered through out the trail but the race manifested into normal trail running at several places. At quite a few places there were more bikers and dogs and no spectators making you feel lonely on the track. I was also disappointed that there was no coverage in print edition San Jose Mercury News this morning but here is an online version.

I learnt the following lessons from the race:

• Practice more hill runs as the hillocks towards the end were hitting hard
• More cross-training to develop over-all body strength
• Not sure, but loose some more weight to keep chugging along towards the end

Over all, I’m happy with my performance and learned lessons to improve upon next time.

Technorati: Running Marathon Silicon Valley Marathon

1. Running first marathon this weekend
2. Final push for marathon training
3. Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon 2009 Completed – 6:57 pace, personal best!
4. San Francisco Half Marathon 2009 Completed – Personal Best so far!
5. Silicon Valley Half Marathon 2008 Completed – best time so far