PatrickJohnMcCrann.com

Once again we have the faster folks pitted against those who aim just to finish the event. While the median finishing times cited in the article are around 4 hours and 30 minutes, anyone who has spectated a marathon knows that finishers cross the line seven, sometimes eight hours after the gun has sounded and well after the finish line has been taken down.

As you know, recently hit a big goal of mine — running a sub-three hour marathon. I managed to squeak in by 18 seconds, with a very tightly run race. I wanted to step back and look at some of the data to see how the race truly went so you could perhaps learn a bit from what I did.

After much talk and moderate training, my first stand alone marathon since 2002 is in the books: 2:59:45. My #1 goal was to go sub three hours, and thanks to my garmin and some well place EN peeps at about .2 miles to go(!), it’s in the books. Here are some sentences, with the data below.