Useless Stats from the Napa Valley Marathon

This was an absolutely fantastic race to enter to set a PR. A net downhill with a nice tailwind - what better conditions could you ask for? I was able to set two PRs: a 1:47 half marathon (3 minutes faster) and a 3:52 marathon (43 minutes faster!). I averaged an 8 minute mile for the first half, coming in a few seconds over or under 8 on every mile, the most even halfer I've ever ran. My fastest mile was #3 at 7:41, and my slowest mile was #23 at 10:40 (took a walk break and a break to eat and drink). Out of all 26 miles I only had 4 of them that broke the ten minute mark (17 @ 10:14, 23 @ 10:40, 25 @ 10:10, 26 @ 10:30). The last half mile I came in at an 8:28 pace as the excitement of coming in under 4 hours began to set in. Average pace: 8:53 min/mile. Average speed: 6.76 mph. Maximum speed: 9.5 mph.

Back to the beginning. When I started the marathon I was in the restroom. By the time I started the start line was deserted, with a few stragglers such as myself. So for all intents and purposes I started in last and I loved the forced opportunity to see how many runners I could pass up. I was a little startled to see that a half mile into the marathon there were people who were jogging and then, huh?, they started walking! A half mile in! I hope they finished, but they may have took on too much of a challenge. Anyway, I ended up finishing 605 out of 1,757. Supposing there were an extremely conservative 100 people in the same situation I was in at the start, that would mean I passed 1,052 runners, or 59.87%!

I consumed before and during the marathon 1,586 calories. Of course this wasn't enough and I was starving and, as usually happens after a long endurance event, I ate a lot that day. I usually average around 4,000 calories on a marathon or 50k day, but on this day I consumed 5,249 calories! And the kicker to this was that I was still hungry at the end of the day! The human body amazes me every day.

This was the farthest I had travelled to date for an event, so it was only fitting that it would be my fastest. From home base to Calistoga: 115.36 miles. Napa was my 8th marathon or longer distance since I ran my first marathon on 7/30/06 (my 2nd this year), 4 of which were road marathons. In continuing the trend, I have set a PR at every single road marathon thus far, bettering my PR by 1:55 since SF 06.

I'm sure I could dredge up some more useless stats, but why bother? These suffice and I had fun discovering them.