After chatting with some running buddies, I started to get excited about the Texas Marathon - Kingwood. One of them is running both USA Fit Marathon, which I will run, and Iron Man.
This season I will be running a series of marathons. Also, the following weekend will be Bandera 100k.
I mapped out a plan where I might hopefully reach my 100th marathon by Houston Marathon 2024, a year hence.
I had never run Texas Marathon - Kingwood because it is so close to Bandera, but this time I thought it would be a good training run. I had run Brazos Bend Marathon a month ago and was looking to improve on that very slow time of 6:19.
The Race
The race is on paved trails through the greenbelt, kind of like the sidewalk trails in the Woodlands. It was a 6.5-mile loop.
I went out at sub-11-minute miles. Around 11 miles, I felt mentally weak and walked around 4 miles. then, I tried to run for 2-mile bursts with walk breaks for a mile or less. The last mile I was really tired. I fought hard.
My band-aids fell off and I was bleeding a lot.
Reflections
I enjoyed this race and would do it again.
At this stage of my running career, a marathon is a big challenge and I like the distance. I still plan to do three ultras this calendar year: Bandera 100k, Muleshoe Bend 60K, and Cactus Rose 100 Mile because they are favorite races. But I'll be doing a lot of marathons and feel I will enjoy that.
I can try to work on getting my time down. This finish of 5:37 was 42 minutes faster than Brazos Bend, so that was some progress. But it was still really slow. I still failed to train for this.
But a New Years Day marathon felt good!
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