Top of Utah Marathon Race Report

Me and my sister-in-law Annie

By Steve

It's been two years since I ran a street marathon.  It's not that I haven't wanted to run one, it's just that with limited funds for running, I have wanted to spend it on ultra races that challenged me more and offer a much better experience.  But my sister-in-law Annie really wanted me to run one with her, and I've always said I would run any race that she runs, so about 4 weeks ago, I signed up to run the Top of Utah Marathon in Logan.

It's a great course.  Downhill for 17 miles, and then it rolls through the neighborhoods for the last 9 miles.  This was the third time I've run it, and I've always liked it.  I did notice that the number of entrants was significantly smaller this year vs the last time I ran it.  This is likely due to the Big Cottonwood Canyon marathon that was run the week prior, and has likely stolen most of the interest that TOU used to have. 

Compared to telling the story of an Ultra Marathon, there isn't much to say about a street marathon any more.  I ran on pavement for 26.2 miles.  There was a canyon and some houses. 

My goal on this one was to beat Sam's best marathon time, which was 3:17:27 from 3 years ago.  Although, I should add that he hasn't run a street marathon in almost 3 years, and I'm pretty sure he would do much better than that now.  But at any rate, I felt like I had to beat that time.  So, planning for the race, I set my pace for what each mile would need to be to put me somewhere in the 3:36:00 range, and stuck with that pace from the beginning.  8:08 down through though mile 17, 8:45 on the short uphill sections, and 8:24 otherwise.  It worked beautifully.  I was a tad slower through the last few miles than I had wanted, but I still finished strong.  My final time ended up being 3:37:17, which put me a whopping 10 seconds faster than Sam's PR.  It also put me 5th place in my division, which is Men 35-39.

With that time, I crushed my own PR by over 10 minutes.  After the race, you tend to ponder on what you should have done differently to run a better race.  On this one, I can't think of a thing.  I feel I ran a very smart race.  The "downside" of that is that I now know there is nothing I can do except to train harder in order to PR again next time.  I guess losing weight would certainly help too.

Division:  5/25
Men:  56/233
Total Finishers:  73/438