Steve's Layton Marathon 2012



Layton Marthon course

In my attempt to redeem myself from my lousy performance in the Utah Valley Marathon, I signed up for the Layton Marathon as soon after the race as possible. The Layton race is the flattest marathon in Utah, and is the only course that meets the requirements where one can officially break a world record.  It has a total elevation change of about 200 feet, and a net GAIN of about 80 feet.  Knowing this, I was still hoping to break my best time of 3:47:55.  The reason I chose this course was it was less than 4 miles away from my house.  This meant I didn't have to drive through any kind of trafic, especially Utah county traffic, to either register, run the race, or get home.  It also was a faily cheep race of $60.00, instead of all the other overpriced marathons.  In addition, being so flat, it also gives you better feel for what your "real" marathon time is.  I think I'll make this race an annual event.

The race was beautiful.  It started before sunrise running north along the east edge of Antelope Island.  Since only 152 people ran the full marathon, the crowd quickly spaced out, and I was left to run mile after mile in quazi-solitude, which was absolutely wonderful.  I saw a small herd of antelope run across the road in front of me, and a large herd of buffalo running around while the bus was driving us to the start line.

Starting about 10 minutes before the race, I had a orange GU Chomp in my mouth for nearly the entire duration of the race.  They look, feel and taste like giant fruit snacks... yup, giant fruit snacks that have been left unwrapped in your pants pocket for the last two months.  But at least they do taste better than the GU gel packets, which taste like used kitty litter, minus the litter.  The good news though is that this helped me not experience the normal energy drain I have experienced all summer when doing longer runs. 

I ran a little over an 8 minute mile pace for the first 17 miles.  I hit my first wall at that point, but then got a second wind from mile 20-23.  At that point, my muscles started feeling the distance, and I finished the last few miles at about a 10 minute mile pace.  My total time was 3:50:15.  Overall, I'm very happy with this, considering the flat course.  I finished 26th out of 152.  I actually finished 3rd in my age group for 30-34.  I didn't stick around to get the medal, since I didn't think I had any chance to ever be in the top 3 of anything, so I wonder if they will let me come pick it up somewhere...  So you'll all just have to imagine me standing on the 3rd place pedestal receiving my medal.  That's what I'm doing.