Well, I’ve been waiting three years write this race report. I finally notched a sub-three hour marathon. The weather was a nice sunny 41° at the start. There was a bit of a headwind, but overall, it was great. This was my second time running the Philly Marathon and being familiar with the course was a big help. There are just enough hills to switch things up, but for the most part the course is flat.

There happened to be a three hour pace group who I stayed with for the first half mile. Unfortunately, there were about 100 other people trying to do the same thing. I picked it up enough just get in front of the group and found my own pace. I went through the 10k around 42 and felt good. So I kept that pace and crossed the halfway mark at 1:28:30. 

With thirteen miles down and thirteen mile to go I started to focus the two main points from the start. One was to cross the half in the 1:28-1:30 range and the second was to get to 20 in the area of 2:15-2:17. I crossed the twenty mile mark at 2:16 and had a 10k to go. From here I ran a consistent 6:50 all the way in. As I turned the corner in the final stretch and I saw 2:58 on the clock, a big old smile came to my face. I finished with a time of 2:58:35 and walked away wondering why this had been so hard.