It has been an incredible 4 months for not only myself but also my now Fiance Suki. Things have been going our way at every possible turn.
It all started in January when I went to a little race called the Bandera 100k. I went into the race with the goal of just having a good race and I wanted to be able to accelerate during the last 2-3 miles. This was supposed to be a long training run for Prairie Spirit. Well traffic held up our start for the race so we started 8 minutes last for an official time of 11:06 (10:58 after my deduction for late start). I finished 17th overall and did not get passed once during the entire race which was a nice feeling.
After Bandera it took me a good 3-4 weeks of on and off running to recover properly. Do not underestimate Bandera or use it as a training race! After fully recovered I hit a couple of 80-90 mile weeks and started to taper for Prairie Spirit 100. I choose this race because it was close to home (5 hours) and an inaugural event that looked fun!
Prairie Spirit was an incredible experience! Probably the best executed race I have ever run. I finished 1st in 16:09 for 102.5 miles. I ran out at an 8:30 pace finding a trail friend to run the first 34 miles with until he dropped. At the turn 7:16 or 7:20 ish we turned back into a nice 10-15 mph headwind and of course sleet. Eventually (65-70 miles in) the sleet turned into a heavy snow. I was able to hold onto a 8:45-9 min/mile through 77 miles and then settled for anything under a 10 min/mile. At around mile 90-95 I lost my focus and dropped off the map taking a couple walk breaks and hitting some 12-13 min miles. A pacer would have come in real handy but with a 10 mile lead I didn't have any drive to continue to push harder and I was a "little" tired.
After finishing Prairie Spirit I contacted Inov-8 about a sponsorship which they were very excited to offer me a 50% product sponsorship. Super excited since I love running in their shoes it was a pretty natural fit.
I followed all of this up with running the Oklahoma City Marathon April 28th and finished in 2:58 a new PR by 12 minutes. My training post Prairie Spirit consisted of just 6-8 mile runs with no speed just base training for the most part. My effort at OKC was good enough to 17th overall and 3rd in my age group of 2700 runners!
Additionally we found out that Suki was accepted into the same program I'm apart of where the Army allows you to obtain a bachleors degree as a full time student and then commission as an officer. We are both very excited about this. She also paced the 5 hour marathon group at OKC and did amazing for her first Marathon!
