Dallas Marathon & A Look Back on 2014

Dallas Marathon

December 14th was a pretty good day to run a race.  Temps were in the high 50s and into the 60s with complete cloud coverage.  We had high humidity and a slight breeze with occasional gusts, which helped me stay cool throughout the race.  There was an increasing chance for rain after 12:00 PM however I finished well ahead of the rain.

This was my second time to Dallas Marathon, so this race had some redemption value to me.  In 2012 I finished with a time of 3:11:00 due to fairly severe pain in my knee that didn't allow me to continue running.  I was really looking forward to running the race again in 2013 but mother nature was not going to make it so and so the race was canceled due to a freak ice storm that hit the Dallas/Fort Worth region several days before the race.

Right before the race began I decided that I wasn't going to push myself to PR and just run the race at a pace I could feel really good at.  After the race started I settled in at a pace between 10:00 and 10:20 per mile.  This is a pace I am very durable at and had run when I was in the middle of my marathon training, so I knew I could easily not bonk out at any point during the race.  The only really challenge I had was that I got blisters which made it painful to run at the end of the race.  I've had trouble with blisters for several weeks now so I need to see what I can do to fix that.

I will say that I really enjoyed the route this year compared to what the route was back in 2012.  I would love to see the route used again in the future as I got to see some parts of Dallas I have never seen before, especially along Greenville Avenue.  There also was some great crowd support along much of the half marathon course.  Another stark contrast between the 2014 route and 2012 route is that at the end of the 2014 route you run downhill to the finish line for about the last .1 to .15 miles.  The 2012 half marathon route had you running uphill, past the finish line and then make "U"-turn back down towards the finish line.

This year the race felt like it was very well run.  2012 was well run as well but I think this year was better than before.  I guess we were lucky but this time the family reunion area was located outdoors.  While that's not an issue it would not have been fun to be sitting in the rain waiting for a family member to come out of the finish area.  In 2012 that area was indoors in the convention center.  To be fair there was some remodeling construction taking place so I wonder if that forced the marathon planners to move that outside?

The Dallas Marathon returns next year on December 13th, 2015.

Running in 2014

I didn't make my goal this year of finishing a half marathon in under two hours however I did take off more than 15 minutes from my best time.  I also ran my first marathon in May.  For the year I will have logged almost 700 miles (as of this blog post I am only 27 miles short) for the year.  I have seen my pace come down considerably.  My endurance has increased allowing me to go harder and for longer.  I'm also mentally tougher than before.

I feel like I have improved by leaps and bounds this year.  It will be hard to duplicate this level of improvement next year.  I am going to continue my speed work as I feel that has done a lot for me in conditioning and running form.

What do I have ahead of me for 2015?  

Well, I am going to run some races that aren't in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  I am already signed up for the Run the Line in Texarkana, TX in February, the Alamo 13.1 in San Antonio, TX in March, and the Flying Pig Marathon / 3-way Challenge (5k, 10k, Half Marathon) in Cincinnati, OH in May.

I am seriously considering the runDisney Avengers Super Hero Half Marathon, which is in November in Los Angeles, CA at Disney Land.

I don't have any other destination races lined up.  My two (perhaps) local favorites are the DRC Half Marathon and the Dallas Marathon.  I might run some other races I have participated in as well.