Nashville Marathon

Happy to get to do this, especially after a last minute registration snafu. Easiest PR I’ll ever have the chance to nab. With that said, definitely not my day. I dropped my soft flask of gel almost immediately in the throng at the beginning, shooting my plan in the foot from the beginning. I went out too fast on the early hills, although not as much as my terrible split would suggest. I felt fine aerobically, but not even halfway in my calves started cramping outrageously. Several times I could barely walk let alone run. I’ve had minor calf cramps at the very end of long runs before, but never anything that prevents me from running and never that soon. You can see in my HR chart exactly where it happened because my heart dropped a good 15 BPM and never even approached zone 3 again because my legs wouldn’t turn over. Not the even close to what I was looking for, this was a hard pill for me to swallow but I learned a lot and I just like running and that’s just part of it. Another silver lining is that my hip flexor was totally fine, although the attention to my form spent on it might have contributed to the cramping